Carisa Lee

Re­porter

Carisa.Lee@cnc3.co.tt

Of the 150 schools set to re­ceive gov­ern­ment-is­sued lap­tops for Form One stu­dents, 60 per cent re­main with­out them as the new school term start­ed yes­ter­day.

Dis­tri­b­u­tion be­gan on No­vem­ber 27 at Pe­nal Sec­ondary School. In June 2025, it was an­nounced that the Gov­ern­ment would pur­chase 18,000 lap­tops and ac­ces­sories for stu­dents who were set to start Form One in Sep­tem­ber.

Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry, Claudelle McKel­lar, said yes­ter­day an­oth­er tranche was ex­pect­ed to be re­leased in the next two weeks.

“Again, we hope that all will be de­liv­ered by the end of Jan­u­ary to mid-Feb­ru­ary 2026, sub­ject to de­liv­ery from the sup­pli­er,” he said.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath said since the launch, dis­tri­b­u­tion has been pro­gress­ing in phas­es and will con­tin­ue over the com­ing weeks. He added that prin­ci­pals will pro­vide di­rect up­dates to par­ents and guardians of Form Ones as the process ad­vances.

“The lap­top pro­gramme is a pri­or­i­ty ini­tia­tive of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion. It is cen­tral to our vi­sion of mod­ern, in­clu­sive ed­u­ca­tion and en­sur­ing that every child has the tools need­ed to suc­ceed in an in­creas­ing­ly dig­i­tal world. When the dis­tri­b­u­tion process is ful­ly com­plet­ed, the na­tion will be for­mal­ly in­formed,” he said in a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day.

Dur­ing the three weeks of Christ­mas va­ca­tion, Dowlath said all 82 in­fra­struc­ture projects ap­proved by the min­istry were com­plet­ed.

Of these, 35 projects were ex­e­cut­ed un­der the Min­istry’s Va­ca­tion Re­pairs Pro­gramme (VRP) and the oth­er 47 were com­plet­ed as emer­gency works. He said in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing Ser­vices (MTS), works were done at Ear­ly Child­hood Care Ed­u­ca­tion (EC­CE) cen­tres, pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools.

“The scope of works in­clud­ed re­pairs to roofs and ceil­ings, sew­er and drainage sys­tems, wash­room fa­cil­i­ties, air-con­di­tion­ing units, wa­ter lines, and elec­tri­cal in­fra­struc­ture,” Dowlath added.

Op­er­a­tions at the Na­tion­al Schools Di­etary Ser­vices Lim­it­ed al­so re­sumed yes­ter­day, from 67 kitchens, where ap­prox­i­mate­ly 62,000 break­fasts and 75,000 lunch­es were de­liv­ered to stu­dents.