There will be national manufacturing of laptops and tablets for education

Abinader described the matter as “something extraordinary since the free zone industries move to another level and will allow for good competition in terms of prices and quality.”

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic – The electronic devices needed to meet the requirements of Dominican education will be manufactured in the country thanks to the signing of a memorandum of understanding with the company Encore Repair Services on Tuesday.

President Luis Abinader, who led the signing of the agreement, and Vice President Raquel Peña, said that the initiative contemplates the manufacture in the country of electronic tablets, laptops, and netbooks.

“The important thing is that we have already reached a maintenance agreement so that if one of these tablets is damaged, there will be a place to repair them in the country, and they will not be lost,” said the President.

The president described the matter as “something extraordinary since the free zone industries move to another level and will allow for a good competition in terms of prices and quality.”

For his part, the Minister of Education, Roberto Fulcar, said that the Government “has already taken giant steps for the country to definitively overcome the so-called digital gap” and recalled that 117,000 laptops have already been delivered to teachers and 495,000 to students.

“This is a demonstration that the government headed by Luis Abinader has sufficient political will to achieve in record time the definitive closing of the digital divide,” Fulcar reiterated.

This action, the minister continued, “will help create a generation of Dominicans with a strong digital and technological culture that will contribute to the development of skills for employment, communications, personal and family economic growth.”

Meanwhile, business advisor Juan Enrique Álvarez said that the scope of the agreement includes, in addition to in-country manufacturing of electronic tablets, laptops, and portable electronic notebooks, services for loading operating systems and software, as well as device rebuilding and repair and after-sales services.

The sustainable creation of jobs and the transfer of knowledge “to contribute to the development of talent and innovation in the field of technology, among other things,” are additional benefits of the agreement, said Alvarez.

The plant manager of Encore Repair Services said that this is a new beginning for business, which will expand the country’s participation in technology projects, “we are grateful to work with the government in the creation of new job opportunities.”

For the government, the institutions participating in this program are the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MESCyT), the Technological Institute of the Americas (ITLA), the Cybernetic Park of Santo Domingo (PCSD), and the Higher Technical Community Institute (ITSC).