Under this Supplementary Appropriation Bill, 7 million dollars is being allowed to the Ministry of Education is being allotted to fund the distance learning initiatives for the hundred thousand or so school children trapped at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Leader of the Opposition challenged the Minister of Education to justify that expenditure. That led to a sparring match between the two, and here's that part of today's House Meeting:
Hon. John Briceno, Leader of the Opposition
"The one that has also called my attention is certainly the one on capital 3: the ministry of education, youth, sports and culture, where you have 7 million for the purchase of hardware and software, the e-learning application for distance learning. I wish that the minister of education can tell us more about it. If he can explain what kind of tendering, this issue about selective tendering we know is a whole set up. When you are talking about 3-4 million dollars that they are going to use in buying these tablets, we have to ensure that there must be open tendering and that we could get the best quality for the best price."
Hon. Patrick Faber, Minister of Education
"My friend my Freetown got up, all on the social media, public TV to disclose their plan for education. One of the primary points that they made was that they were going to digitize learning. When they press my friend from Freetown for answers he said that they would take anytime from between zero years when they get in to 5 years in order to get from 1st form to 4th form and from standard 4-6 digital devices and get everybody equip for e-learning. So it must really pain them and I can see it when it is that the United Democratic Party government is able to in a matter of months provide all the digital devices that we need in order to be able to deck out all of high school and in fact a portion of our primary school students as well."
"The monies that are being allotted will yield 15,500 tablets to this nation. I don't even want to call it a tablet, because the truth is what they are trying to minimize as a tablet has develop so far that in fact if you go to big corporations in the United States, people walk around with a tablet with a keyboard attached. That is what their computer is now. But a 10 inch tablet, I think it's Logic 10.1, something like that is the brand. You could go and look it up. I just looked it up and the retail price of it on the internet goes between $446.00 and $514.00 Belize. But that's not what we are going to pay for it of course. Because as my friend said they do these transactions all the time it would seem. When you buy in bulk you get a better price, but when it was communicated to me that this is the device that would best suit our needs, I said I won't accept that. We need more. So we insisted on getting more until we got all the software that we needed loaded on and just for your benefit you will know that the main bit of software that we are using on it which is Office 365 is given to this country in a licensed format free by the Microsoft Corporation, but to load it onto all the devices is a cost. I also insisted that we get a 3 year warranty on the devices, so that if there is some malfunction on the devices, that that is thrown in. I insisted that the students will get a carrying case for their device. I insisted that the students will get the Bluetooth keyboard that attaches, so that in fact when those students are using those devices you would think it's a full computer and in truth, that is what it is. It is a big 10 inch screen with a case, with the keyboard tagged on to it connecting by Bluetooth and even when they told me that I said that's not enough, so they threw in a headset, because you know the students will be on Zoom and Teams. Teams is what goes with the Microsoft package. It is a very loaded package for the price that we are getting it. My friend from Freetown ask about a survey being done to see who really needs the devices. That has been done and it has been properly done and if you want to know, the truth is it was done even before we announce that we would have given devices. So you know what happened we did 2 rounds of consultations to find out who needed devices. In the first instance the number of students who said they had some kind of device that could connect was much lower. When we went around and after they heard that the government was going to provide one, it went up almost over 2,500 more. It does not matter because this administration with this 7 million dollars is procuring all the devices that are needed to satisfy the needs of our secondary students and then some, because we are going to also provide for some primary school students under this initiative."
As we told you, this bill has been passed by the House, and it now goes to the Senate.
