LAHORE: The much-trumpeted laptop scheme of the Punjab government has started earning a bad name for the provincial government as the computers given to talented students are available in city markets.
The stunning development has seriously hit the whole scheme as people are openly questioning whether the multi-billion rupee plan of the Punjab government is going to the right direction?
City's main computer markets like Hall Road and Hafeez Centre are openly selling the laptops at about Rs 18,000 to Rs 20,000 a piece whereas the Punjab government claimed to have bought them at about Rs 35,000 each. The purpose of awarding laptops, according to the Punjab government, was to help talented students do their research and explore their talent. However, critics believe that the purpose of the laptops was to keep the youth away from joining Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf. There have been reports of large scale financial irregularities in the scheme which the provincial government denies.
A shopkeeper at Hafeez Centre told this scribe that the boy who had come to sell his laptop at almost half price said he already owned a quality laptop while the computer given to him under the Punjab government's scheme was surplus that was why he was disposing it of. In another case, two girl students of Lahore College for Women University, who got laptops and sold them in the market, said that almost evrybody had a laptop in the modern age of computer technology. Some insiders believed that the laptops were being given in many cases to students who had earned no distinction in their academic career and they were selling them by considering them useless for them.
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