PoS students to get 314 tablets from City Hall

THE Port of Spain City Corporation will be presenting about 314 computer tablets to students living in the city to help with online studies during the covid19 pandemic, Alderman Wendell Stephens told Newsday after Wednesday’s statutory meeting of the Port of Spain council at City Hall.

Earlier, he told the meeting that 144 tablets have been ordered for students, declaring, “It’s all good news.” Afterwards he told Newsday these would be bought for $65,000, after which he expected another allocation of $85,000 to be spent to buy about 170 tablets, giving a total of about 314 tablets.

Stephens told Newsday each councillor would be allocated a number of these devices to distribute to students in their electoral districts. He reckoned the tablets would be available within a week.

Stephens said the tablets would be paid for through a covid19 fund the Government had set up for all corporations to access.

"We used ours for hampers, hand sanitisers and the health protocols, and the last bit of funds we are now using to assist children with their virtual learning during covid."

Noting that councillors were also entitled to each receive a laptop, he had told the meeting that this was in order to serve burgesses and their children.

“We don’t want computers to play games and Scrabble.”

Stephens also told the meeting that $150,000 will be spent to buy garbage bins for the city. He later told Newsday that the types of bins to be bought, whether plastic or metal, and the locations to be placed were still to be worked out.