In the final stretch of the last legislature, the Minister of Public Works, Transport and Communications, Mário Lino, will have used social action money to settle Magalhães’ accounts with telecommunications operators.
According to advanced information on the Visão website, the Foundation for Mobile Communications, the body created to manage the project, received a transfer of 180 million euros from the School Social Action. The amount will have served to match accounts with mobile operators, involved in school programs to fulfill the obligations related to the development of the Information Society, which resulted from obtaining their 3G licenses.
Of this amount, 100 million euros were delivered to JP Sá Couto, responsible for the manufacture of the 370 thousand Magalhães delivered during the past year. The remaining 80 million were left to the operators, compensated in this way by the amounts invested in the e-school, aimed at students from the 2nd cycle, teachers and trainees of the New Opportunities.
Público adds to this information that the payment of the social action was foreseen since the beginning of the project and that it served to compensate the planned contribution for underprivileged students, information conveyed by a Government source, which confirms the transfer.
It should be remembered that Magalhães is the center of the e-school program that this year will continue after a public tender. The way in which the program – evaluated yesterday by APDSI – was implemented will be the target of a commission of inquiry requested by the PSD.
