Thousands yet to cash $20,000 laptop-tablet vouchers
Published:Thursday | May 20, 2021 | 12:15 AMRomario Scott/Gleaner Writer
Just over half of the vouchers the Ministry of Education, Youth and Information had issued to help with the purchase of tablets and laptops have been redeemed.
This was revealed by portfolio minister Fayval Williams, as she gave an update on the ministry’s Own Your Own Device programme on Wednesday in Parliament.
The minister reported that as of May 17, some 34,058 persons had applied to the programme, which represents 95 per of the target.
Approximately 24,000 vouchers have been so far issued and 13,337 persons have redeemed the vouchers valued at a combined $226.7 million.
The incentive programme is an initiative aimed at assisting parents and guardians to provide their children with the tech devices to access classes in the virtual environment. Students benefiting have to be in need, but are not registered to the Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education.
Under the programme, parents or guardians receive an electronic voucher (eVoucher) valued at $20,000 towards the purchase of a device from an approved vendor.
The majority of the vouchers were redeemed to purchase tablets over laptops.
St Catherine, St Ann, Kingston and St Andrew accounted for the majority of the redemption.
In terms of student profile, the majority of the vouchers were redeemed for students in grades three, four and five.
Opposition spokesperson on education, Dr Angela Brown-Burke, said the redemption numbers were troubling, noting that members of parliament should now be going through a file with a view of improving that figure.
Meanwhile, Williams has disclosed that 37,179 students have been registered to sit the Primary Exit Profile ability test next Wednesday.
She said all infrastructure is in place for the sitting of the scaled-down version of the high-school placement exam.
Williams said requests were made by 320 students for special accommodation.
“These were evaluated by our Special Education Unit, and of this amount, 290 would have received the special accommodation. Five applicants will receive linguistic aid in terms of their native language versus the English, in which the exam is written,” the minister said.
Because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the education ministry decided that it would not administer the complete PEP examinations.