The Member of Parliament for St John’s Rural West, Richard Lewis, has called on Prime Minister Gaston Browne and Minister of Education Daryll Matthew to fully investigate the unresolved e-books Scandal before considering re-engaging Fortuna Pix or hiring any other provider.
Lewis expressed his concerns, stating: “The government has not yielded to our requests for a full investigation into the e-book scandal and now we are hearing that the government is planning to re-engage Fortuna or similar project and I’m seeing the concerns that we had with the first project must be investigated.”
He emphasised the need for accountability and transparency, saying, “How can you have a project that ended in a scandal. No investigation, no account given to the people of Antigua and Barbuda and you’re just going to come now after dumping thousands of the devices, you’re going to come now and say to the people we are reengaging Fortuna Pix on a similar project? I don’t understand that — no accountability, no transparency. It’s as if this government is just slapping the people in the face, saying to taxpayers we do whatever we want.”
Lewis clarified that he is not against the E-book initiative but rather the manner in which it is implemented.
“From the very onset, when the idea of the e-books came about, I mentioned that I am for e-books as technology as most of the major publishers have the e-book version of your textbook and so those are available. And what I was suggesting is that we adopt the e-book version of the various textbooks in our schools rather than reinventing the wheel,” he explained.
However, Education Minister Matthew refuted the claims of a scandal, stating, “Richard Lewis and the entire UPP continues to try to perpetuate this concept and that there’s some scandal with the e-books, the implementation of the e-books a few years ago, and are keeping it.
“There was no scandal and initial sales charge. We heard it was way too high and that is simply the end of life. However, Fortuna Pix continues to provide e-book service to frontier and divider. In fact, about 7,000 students are on the platform.”
Regarding the discarded tablets, Matthew acknowledged, “The fact is, once again, these tablets that were destroyed or discarded or disposed of at the Cooks [Landfill], these were tablets that were in excess of six years old. They had passed the effective lifespan. In fact, I spoke in Parliament very clearly about it; all of those tablets had reached the end of their technological life.”
However, he agreed that more care should have been taken to ensure that all the memory cards had been removed from the tablets before they were disposed.
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