Richard Lord

Op­po­si­tion Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Pa­tri­cia McIn­tosh is call­ing on the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment to re­con­sid­er its promise to pro­vide lap­tops for all Form One stu­dents.

She made the call dur­ing her con­tri­bu­tion to yes­ter­day's de­bate on the 2010/11 bud­get in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Mc McIn­tosh, a for­mer sec­ondary school prin­ci­pal, said the ini­tia­tive was not clear­ly thought out. The MP for Port-of-Spain North/St Ann's West ques­tioned whether se­cu­ri­ty was prop­er­ly ad­dressed, say­ing: "While we are hasti­ly pro­vid­ing easy ac­cess to tech­nol­o­gy, we are not just as hasti­ly aid­ing and abet­ting, nur­tur­ing and per­pet­u­at­ing the crim­i­nal el­e­ment in our so­ci­ety."

She said re­strict­ing cer­tain sites on the lap­top was not fool­proof. She added:"Those cre­ative and in­no­v­a­tive minds could so eas­i­ly and clev­er­ly dis­arm, dis­man­tle, de­pro­gram and re­con­fig­ure set­tings to suit their needs." McIn­tosh said while she was hap­py that ed­u­ca­tion got the largest bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion, some $8 bil­lion, she was con­cerned that mon­ey to con­struct cer­tain schools in her con­stituen­cy was re­duced.

She said there was a $6 mil­lion al­lo­ca­tion to the con­tro­ver­sial Biche High School which was built un­der the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion but was nev­er opened be­cause of cer­tain en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues. Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh re­cent­ly said mea­sures were afoot to en­sure the school would be opened soon. Dur­ing McIn­tosh's con­tri­bu­tion there was a heavy down­pour over Port-of-Spain, forc­ing act­ing Clerk of the House, Mar­lene An­drews, and oth­er Par­lia­ment staff to place a buck­et to catch wa­ter.