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Punjab’s laptop scheme has become controversial, so is the case with Mr. Shahbaz Sharif. It is yet to ascertain if this whole campaign against Mr. Sharif is outcome of Prime Minister’s conviction, as political silos are hot like hell, or allegations against laptop scheme are for real. We will try to evaluate few of them below.
From what it appears, all political parties are currently doing their best to outperform others in blames, accusations, allegations and what not. Media has apparently decided not to remain behind too.
This whole scenario has engulfed the laptop scandal with fierce beating that it got from media with some sensitive and reasonable questions. But at the same time media men are throwing serious rubbish, something that they are notorious for.
Let’s take an example of Mubashir Luqman. Before we get to our discussion, please watch this video clip from his show on Dunya TV on May 1st, 2012:
I won’t discuss the pricing of laptops or the decision of Punjab government to give away laptops instead of building schools – this is something that can be argued and should be argued for better and transparent governance.
But I will rather focus on other matters such as Mr. Luqman has claimed that the Laptops were not manufactured by Dell company, instead they were manufactured in China. Probably he is of the view that these laptops are china-made fake copies of dell. Sir; you need to pay a visit to computer market and look at the back side of laptops to straighten your facts. It will help.
Then he goes on to compare Youth initiative laptops with another model of dell without mentioning the model of laptop. Following is the screenshot of the comparison:
Mr. Luqman further alleges that operating system in Punjab Laptops is not original but a pirated copy of Microsoft Windows. He also regrets that Punjab government could be in real trouble if Microsoft gets notice of this incident. Maybe Mr. Luqman was misinformed on this as Punjab Youth Laptops come with Ubuntu OS – which is an open source free operating system.
Mubashir Luqman astonished everyone by claiming that Punjab Laptops (which are actuallyDell Inspiron N4050 with variations in processor and RAM) is a 15 years old technology. Well I am not kidding here, you can watch above video yourself to see what exactly he said.
Maybe Mr. Luqman hadn’t the opportunity to buy or operate a computer 15 years ago (somewhere around 1997) when we had to pay the price of a laptop for just 16 MB Ram.
Mr. Mubashir Luqman also terms Punjab Youth Laptop 400 times slower than the original Dell laptop without mentioning his gauges.
Again, this whole scheme could be a waste of money. Maybe 4 billion rupees could have been used for better education, or maybe for another education department for lot better means. But it is really shocking, disgraceful and shameful to twist facts, rather telling direct lies, just to support an argument.
Even worse, this TV show was translated and distributed by a newswire (Online News Network) to whole media. They went even further by claiming that actual price of laptop was Rs. 19,500 which was bought by Punjab Government for Rs. 37,700.
Have a look at following clipping taken from today’s Jang Newspaper:
