Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

Over 20,000 lap­tops will be pro­cured by the gov­ern­ment to dis­trib­ute to stu­dents in need of de­vices.

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly told Guardian Me­dia this is es­ti­mat­ed to cost tax­pay­ers ap­prox­i­mate­ly $50,000,000, the amount al­lot­ted by the Fi­nance Min­is­ter dur­ing the 2021 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion last month.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Gads­by-Dol­ly, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has al­ready com­piled the list of stu­dents in need of de­vices to be able to con­tin­ue with on­line-school­ing. She not­ed, how­ev­er, a means test is be­ing de­signed to fur­ther fil­ter out those who al­ready re­ceived do­na­tions. The Min­is­ter said she ex­pects that the de­vices, be­ing pro­cured through the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion, will be made avail­able “as soon as pos­si­ble.”

Al­so promised dur­ing last month’s bud­get was in­ter­net ac­cess. Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert in­di­cat­ed that by the first quar­ter of next year, stu­dents will be able to ac­cess in­ter­net ser­vices through Mi­Fi tech­nol­o­gy. This mo­bile de­vice, which us­es the 3G/4G mo­bile net­work, cre­ates a mi­ni wire­less hotspot and can be shared among mo­bile de­vices with­in range.

Asked for an up­date on the Mi­Fi de­vices, Dr Gads­by-Dol­ly stat­ed, “this will be ad­dressed in the next two weeks.”