SOUTH St Catherine Member of Parliament Fitz Jackson has lashed the drivers of the e-Learning Jamaica Project, charging that they have “deceived the Jamaican public” by not carrying out any activity under that initiative for an entire year despite a more than $1.2-billion budget.

“We were misled. For one year not one cent of this money was spent …Your colleagues that fell under the project have deceived the Jamaican public,” an incensed Jackson told Grace McLean, acting permanent secretary in the Ministry of Education, when she appeared before the committee with ministry officials on Tuesday.

Noting that he was aware that she had no control over what had occurred, Jackson — who said he had marketed the virtues of the programme to his constituents on more than one occasion — said he found the explanation given as to the reason the money was not spent disingenuous.

Based on information contained in the Second Supplementary Estimates of Expenditure now being examined by the Parliament and its committees, only $530 million of that sum is budgeted for expenditure between up to March this year when the budget year closes. The explanation given for the lack of expenditure of the funds was that the responsibility for the project was transferred to the Ministry of Science, Technology Energy and Mining. However, Jackson dismissed the explanation as “amounting to nothing” since that change in responsibility for the project from the Ministry of Education to the science and technology only took place in January this year.

E-Learning is an education initiative, which utilises Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in the delivery of subjects. It is targeted at high school students and uses both formal and informal methods of teaching in order to improve the quality of education, enhance the learning experience and ensure high levels of passes in the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) tests.