The laptop initiative is ridiculous from a cost perspective

Dear Editor,
I always have deep reservations when politicians make promises. Particularly in an election year. So I am skeptical about the US$30 million laptop idea.

Which is why I appreciated SN’s push to investigate this matter more fully in its article titled `President’s US$30M laptop pledge raises doubt over viability.’ Firstly, corruption will eat away a significant portion of this pipe dream and many Guyanese will simply end up making do with the dream and nothing else while someone with the right connections buys a new Prado.

Secondly, the bigger problem is the cost of internet access. There is no sign GT&T is going to offer internet access at anything remotely lower than its current gargantuan price. Their prices are plain ridiculous. Poor people can’t pay these prices even if the government gives them five laptops each.

Given its actions, the government has seemingly extended GT&T’s contract and is now trying to drum up business for the monopolist. After all its protestations about GT&T the government is hell bent on spending taxpayers’ money (all US$30 million of it) on giving Guyanese a product that forces them to acquire services from GT&T in order to fully use it. The government wants 90,000 poor people to fork over a fortune every month to a monopolist in order to use their free laptops. The better use of this US$30 million would have been to invest it in acquiring a cable similar to GT&T’s Americas II to provide a competing high-quality bandwidth under the auspices of government.

Not the cart before the horse foolishness of giving laptops to people when they can’t afford the cost of internet. Laptops are getting cheaper in China and India. India just revealed a US$35 laptop for crying out loud. Bandwidth is the real deal.

Here we are with no laptops in schools accessible to teachers but we have a President who promises laptops in homes where children may not even get an opportunity to use them for education. This promise of assistance from the state to help those who cannot afford to pay for internet is another corruption spree waiting to happen. How much assistance are we talking about? Who decides who gets assistance and who doesn’t? Will PPP supporters get more of such assistance than supporters of other parties? Will poor Guyanese have to pay bribes to obtain such assistance? After spending US$30 million to give poor Guyanese laptops is the President really telling us that he will then pay GT&T a fat cheque every month to pay for those Guyanese who need assistance to access the internet? That right there is fundamentally the problem with these ridiculous promises. Imagine people in this nation need government assistance to access the internet!!

This initiative is not being paid for by GT&T. It is coming from taxpayers’ pockets with GT&T getting a massive windfall. 90,000 households paying US$40 per month to GT&T for decent internet access is US$3.6 million per month to GT&T. That is revenue going directly to GT&T. The ‘assistance’ the government promises to provide to help these 90,000 households pay for internet has to be substantial because the 90,000 is the poorest of the poor in Guyana. So the government would have to pay probably half of that monthly US$40 bill for each of those 90,000 households for this pipe dream to work.

That means the government would have to fork over US$1.8 million every month to GT&T. That is US$21.6 million of taxpayer money going to GT&T every year.

US$21.6 million plus US$30 million plus a corruption charge of US$10 million means the government would likely spend US$61.6 million in the first year of this initiative. That is US$684 spent on each of those 90,000 families. Is that money well spent? GT&T landed the Americas II cable for US$30 million.

Based on what it will pay for this initiative in only the first year of operation, the government could land two Americas II cables itself and provide a landslide of cheap internet to Guyanese. That is money well spent not some reckless masquerade for votes. Look out for a lot of poor people selling these laptops to buy food and to pay their electricity or water bills. I really thought our President was an economist.

Yours faithfully,
Michael Maxwell