BarrowCABLE AND Wireless (C&W) Jamaica President Gary Barrow yesterday announced a programme that will give primary and secondary schools free Internet access for the next three years through the HEART/NTA programme.
The initiative will cost between $5 million and $6 million.
This move follows the "Classmate" programme, started last October, in which primary and secondary schools received a discounted flat rate for unlimited Internet access during school hours.
Mr. Barrow was guest speaker at the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica's (PSOJ) Job Creation Awards Ceremony at the Terra Nova Hotel in Kingston, which is also sponsored by Cable and Wireless.
The C&W president said the intention of the company's initiative was to bridge the divide between privileged students (those with full access to the Internet), underprivileged (those with limited access) and excluded (those with no access).
"In our case, I would suggest that the vast majority of our children fall in the last category of the excluded," Mr. Barrow said. "And I think this is really a troubling realisation, as it relates not only to our personal standards but, more importantly, to our economic survival in a global world."
The programme is slated to become effective at the beginning of the new school year and Mr. Barrow estimated that the Classmate programme administered by the HEART Trust/NTA has 150 schools on board, a number that he said could grow to 300.
Education Minister Burchell Whiteman thanked Cable and Wireless for its continued support for education and said the latest programme took the support to another level.
"This gives us a platform for other kinds of interventions, which I hope will have the effect of totally eliminating the digital divide within Jamaica, as far as we can, over the next few years," Minister Whiteman said.
At yesterday's function, four companies - Continental Baking Co. Ltd., TSD Jamaica Ltd., Wrap Your World and H.D. Hopwood & Company Ltd. - were recognised for creating new jobs in the past six months.
Continental Baking and H.D. Hopwood brought in 51 and 29 new employees in the past six months, respectively, while Wrap Your World, a clothing company, created 45 new jobs in the same time span. TSD Jamaica Ltd., a telemarketing firm, which began operating in March, employs 74 staff members.
