MONTEGO BAY, St James — HEAD of the Redemption Chapel Church, Reverend Lascelles Thomas is calling on students at University of the West Indies Western Jamaica Campus (UWI WJC), to assist with teaching computer skills at the recently opened Canterbury Homework and Computer Laboratory.

The facility, housed in the Redemption Chapel Church in the inner-city community of Canterbury, has been equipped with 22 brand new computers by the Universal Service Fund (USF), at a cost of $4.8million. It will also be provided with free Internet service for a year.

“The church here in Canterbury is a small one. We don’t have a lot of personnel in this community, we don’t have the financial resources in this community as well, and so we need help. We need the University of the West Indies Western Campus to come onboard. Ask the students to partner with us to assist the children,” Revered Thomas appealed at the recent opening of the facility.

“We really want on a Saturday to have computer classes and adults are asking, but we don’t have anybody to teach them. And so we call on Montego Bay… come assist us.”

Hugh Cross, CEO of Universal Service Fund, was in agreement with the clergyman.

“I was thinking that the tertiary and secondary institutions in the area could assist the community with instructions as to how to maximise the benefits from the use of the facility,” Cross told the Jamaica Observer West following its official opening on Saturday.

Minister of Science and Technology Phillip Paulwell, in delivering the keynote address, implored Reverend Thomas to avail the Wi-Fi services to all members of the community. “We want to ensure that community persons who come around the premises have access to the Internet. So, if you can free up the password to them we don’t mind,” Paulwell said.

He recommended that upon the expiration of the one-year free Internet service, Rev Thomas should ask Lloyd B Smith, the Member of Parliament for the area, to make representation to the ministry of science and technology for an extension of the free service.

“Come to the MP and beg me for another year, and another year, and another year… because we want our people to have access to Internet because without the Internet you are not going to have access to the world of information. The Internet is what this is all about,” he told the gathering.

Meanwhile, the Universal Service Fund boss pledged that should there become a lack of space at the newly commissioned computer lab, he would consider an expansion of the facility.

“My commitment to the community is that if ever the supply falls short of the demand, in other words if there are more people wishing to use the computer than the capacity that exists, then the Universal Service Fund is prepared to consider an expansion of the facility. In other words, we will provide more equipment to match the demand as long as they have the physical facility to accommodate it, and of course we will pay the internet charges on a monthly basis,” Cross told the Observer West.

One of Montego Bay’s 19 squatter settlements, the densely populated community of Canterbury, consists mostly of flimsy board houses crammed together.

Outsiders are reluctant to enter the community, a section of which is nestled in a deep valley surrounded by hilly terrain. There is only one entrance and exit by road and the community, which sits on roughly four acres of land, is not accessible by vehicular traffic.

According to a socio-economic survey conducted by the Social Development Commission (SDC) in the community just over three years ago, almost 80 per cent of household members have no academic qualification while there are high levels of unemployment in the area.