The laptops that were meant to be distributed to schools in Lebanon have been sold instead, Lebanese caretaker Education Minister Tarek Al-Majzoub has revealed.
In an interview on Al-Jadeed TV’s “Wa Hallaa Shou,” Al-Majzoub said the company that provided 2,400 laptops to the Education Ministry through an international organization falsely claimed the computers had been lost in the Beirut Port explosion.
He explained that the devices were later sold by the company, which he did not name, despite them being public property at the time of their selling.
“They sold public property, and this can’t happen, and [the case] has been transferred to public prosecution,” Al-Majzoub said.
“The state received [the laptops] through the UNHCR, which purchased them for the benefit of the Ministry and transferred their ownership to the Ministry,” he stressed, emphasizing that the case was being followed by the judiciary.
With that said, the official confirmed that some computers that had been stored in warehouses for years were distributed to schools, announcing a soon-to-be-launched platform that will show to which school each individual laptop was sent.
The Education Ministry had announced last year that it would distribute laptops for students in order to ease the exceptional transition to remote education as a result of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
