The Education Ministry’s contract with Television Guyana (TVG) Inc for the provision of technical services for the Guyana Learning Channel for which the company is paid US$15,000 ($3.1 million) monthly, plus value-added tax (VAT) ends next year.
During yesterday’s consideration of the budgetary estimates for the Education Ministry, APNU Shadow Education Minister Amna Ally noted requests for $91 million towards payments under “Other Goods and Services Purchased” in the ministry’s proposed Training and Development Programme.
The amount was allocated for an item listed only as “Other” and so Ally requested details of the minister.
Education Minister Priya Manickchand ex-plained that the funds are to be used for a variety of purposes including to pay for the preparation and marking of Cyril Potter College of Education exams, and to help air the Interactive Radio Instruc-tion Programme (IRI).
Manickchand also said that the amount would, under an existing contract, service payments to TVG for its role in helping to air programmes of the Edu-cation Learning Channel (ELC).
She said that for the channel’s programmes to be disseminated they have to be uplinked to a satellite then downlinked and distributed to the stations which carry the Learning Channel.
She continued that the only operator with this capacity is TVG, and said that the ministry therefore entered into an agreement with the company which provides the service at a cost of US$15,000 per month, plus VAT. The monies are paid over by the National Centre for Resource Development (NCERD).
The contract was signed on December 14, 2010, and the agreement is for five years.
