News
Tabs for schools: Whopping Rs. 55m spent on publicity campaign
The Ceylon Teachers’ Union (CTU) has hit out hard at the Ministry of Education’s for a proposal to conduct a massive publicity campaign regarding the distribution tabs to advanced level students and teachers in public schools.
The ministry has sought cabinet approval to spend a whopping Rs. 55 million for the publicity campaign of its programme to distribute 234,321 tabs to advanced level students and teachers in national schools.
CTU General Secretary Joseph Stalin said the programme had been spoken of since 2017 and was debated widely in the media. As such, he said such a huge amount need not be spent to advertise the programme.
The ministry request comes as a supplementary estimate to a Budget proposal and the approval granted to the cabinet memorandum dated May 31 this year.
According to a ministry official the proposal states that a publicity campaign prior to the distribution of the tabs is a key requirement to create greater awareness among the people on the educational and social benefits received by students by the use of tabs.
Accordingly the ministry is planning to create an attractive publicity campaign through advertisements in the electronic, radio and print media in addition to hoardings.
For this purpose it has handpicked three advertising agencies which have submitted their proposals to the procurement committee of the ministry.
The advertising agency Cherry Isle has quoted Rs. 70.8 million, Media Solutions Rs.70.3 million and the CAPR 7 Media Pvt Ltd Rs. 55 million.
Also in view of the time constraint to select an institution under open competitive procedure the ministry has sought to bypass procurement procedures and to award the publicity campaign to the lowest quoting agency.
It has also requested that the ministry be allowed to get the money from the financial provision made in this year’s Budget allocations.
The plan is to distribute the 234,321 tabs in three stages to school children and teachers in the advanced level classes from next year.
In the first phase, the ministry planned to distribute 96,919 tabs at a cost of Rs.4,000 million in the 4th week of August this year, but it was delayed.
The second and third phases are scheduled to take place next year. Around 77,309 students and 12,221 teachers in national schools will receive 89,530 tabs. Other schools will receive 47,872 tabs for 39,091 students and 8791 teachers.