Give every child a laptop

ONE-TIME A Partnership for National Unity, Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC)
parliamentarian Audwin Rutherford wants the Irfaan Ali government give every child a
laptop to boost the Education Ministry’s ongoing online learning programme.
Rutherford wants this scheme to be part of the government’s plan as it begins its second year in
office following its triumph at the 2020 General and Regional Elections.
“Find a way so that you can give each child in this country a laptop and I would endorse that
because if the first thing that you can do in education is give $19,000.00 which showed that there
was no discrimination then give each child a laptop because each child does need a laptop” he
argued.
Most Guyanese parents with multiple school-aged children cannot afford individual laptops for
each to participate in the government’s online education programme they had to implement since
the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic last year.
Rutherford strongly backs his call because the ongoing multi-billion-dollar cash grant doesn’t
discriminate, he claims.
“I have not seen any discrimination with the distribution of the cash grant as I have seen them
going all over the country. If someone should claim that they are going in their strong areas then
it means that the opposition has no strong areas, because I have seen them going everywhere.
That is why I am endorsing that each child gets a laptop,” Rutherford said.
He said the economic challenges faced by several parents in securing laptops forced his appeal
on the behalf of numerous students facing hardships to attend the electronic classes.

“I know of patents with three children in the home with one laptop and when classes are going
on how can three persons possibly share one laptop? Some of us might be lucky to have one
child,” he said.
Rutherford has been playing Good Samaritan behind the scenes.
“I have quietly given disadvantaged persons laptops,” he disclosed.