The bur­den of thou­sands of pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary chil­dren car­ry­ing heavy book­bags may come to an end by next year.

The mat­ter came up dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee in­to the ex­pen­di­ture of the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter in Par­lia­ment.

Ch­agua­nas West MP Gan­ga Singh said the world was ad­vanc­ing in tech­nol­o­gy and mov­ing away from the use of text­books to Ebooks ques­tion­ing when T&T will fol­low­ing in this di­rec­tion.

Singh drew ref­er­ence to the 2020 es­ti­mat­ed al­lo­ca­tion of $5 mil­lion for the text­book rental man­age­ment unit for pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia in­ter­ject­ed, say­ing that Singh’s ad­vice came like a breath of fresh air.

“We are on with every­thing that you have said. You have made a lot of sense,” Gar­cia told Singh.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert jumped in, say­ing Cab­i­net re­cent­ly went on­line with an en­crypt­ed sys­tem which has eased the bur­den of min­is­ters, Sen­a­tors and MPs car­ry­ing bulky brief­cas­es when­ev­er they go.

“I can’t imag­ine why we did not have it be­fore,” Im­bert said.

Im­bert said he would sup­port any E-pro­gramme com­ing from Gar­cia’s min­istry that would take stu­dents to on­line ed­u­ca­tion and Ebooks.

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Lovell Fran­cis said the min­istry was mov­ing to un­veil a school­ing man­age­ment sys­tem soon.

“Where these things will be on­line and Ebooks... we are al­ready look­ing at it to be part and par­cel of that. This is al­ready in train,” Fran­cis said.

Ch­agua­nas East MP Fazal Karim en­quired if ed­u­ca­tors and teach­ers can see the in­tro­duc­tion of the Ebooks in schools for the “new aca­d­e­m­ic year” in 2020.

“We are work­ing to­wards that,” Gar­cia re­spond­ed.

Cu­mu­to/ Man­zanil­la MP Chris­tine Newal­lo-Ho­sein ques­tioned how the min­istry in­tend­ed to roll out the Ebooks when the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment Gov­ern­ment had scrapped the lap­top ini­tia­tive.

“You are off the beat­en track,” Gar­cia told Newal­lo-Ho­sein telling her that the line item she had raised does not deal with the text­book man­age­ment unit.