Story: Mary Ankrah
ONE hundred thousand laptops were yesterday distributed to individuals and students across the country under the “Better Ghana Laptop Project”.
Beneficiaries included students from the various institutions of higher learning, including nursing training colleges, polytechnics and universities, in the 10 regions of the country.
The move, which is a partnership programme between the government and rlg Communications Limited, forms part of the government’s commitment to build a better Ghana through science and technology, research and innovation.
Speaking at the ceremony to hand over the laptops to the beneficiaries, President John Dramani Mahama underscored the need to promote research, teaching and learning which underlined the government’s decision to undertake both the basic school computerisation project and the Better Ghana Laptop Project.
He reiterated the government’s commitment to place the highest premium on quality and access to education delivery.
“The government is compelled to comply with the constitutional mandate enjoining us to make education not only of the highest quality but progressively free,” he said.
According to him, the continuous desire of the government to reverse the school under trees phenomenon would align ongoing projects to deliver 100,000 laptops to basic and second-cycle schools, teacher and nursing training colleges, polytechnics and universities to promote teaching, learning and research under the better Ghana agenda.
He said the government’s existing project to supply 60,000 laptops to basic schools nationwide was almost completed, adding that a child in the remotest part of the country could now feel, touch and use a computer.
He gave an assurance that all students and educational institutions in the country would benefit from the laptop distribution programme and urged beneficiaries to take good care of the equipment and put it to uses that would benefit them, their schools, families and communities.
In addition, President Mahama announced that the government would, from next year, commence a special project to train 50,000 teachers in ICT uses and applications to facilitate ICT teaching and learning in public basic and high schools.
On the training of persons with disability (PWDs) in ICT, he observed that the government saw the need to equip PWDs with the requisite ICT skills and knowledge, with the sole aim of making them economically productive.
Alongside the distribution of the laptops at the ceremony, 5,000 PWDs across the country graduated after taking part in the first phase of the training project in software, hardware, entrepreneurship, repair and assembling of computers.
The figure represents 2,500 PWDs from each of the southern and northern sectors of the country.
Out of the number, 2,500 will be attached to schools where locally assembled laptops were being used to teach and repair the computers.
The rest, Mr Mahama said, would be absorbed directly by the private sector under an arrangement between the government and some private sector institutions.
While urging Ghanaians to work at eliminating the exclusion of PWDs from all activities, he said there were ongoing discussions to ensure strict compliance with the Disability Act by all state and private actors.
The Chief Executive Officer of rlg Communications, Mr Roland Agambire, said the success of the project had necessitated the need to expand facilities at the company’s assembly plant at Osu in Accra, adding that plans were underway to construct a second assembly and fabrication plant by the end of the year.
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