Members from the United Student Movement 2020-2021 regime are seen with the student tablet awardees following the Launch of the Movement’s Recipients’ Fund on Thursday, February 11, 2021, at the Northern Caribbean University’s Gymnatorium.

Photo Credit: Sheridon Gayle

By: Amoy Harriott

President of the United Student Movement (USM) Ruel Haye has revealed that the partnership in the pipeline between the movement and Digicel Jamaica will be implemented in the upcoming regime, next fall. 

The partnership, which will serve as an addition to USM’s Recipients’ Fund, seeks to funnel into every programme hosted by the student governing body. 

“Digicel wants to be intertwined with USM. The outlook that I had in my proposal is that students will receive five million dollars in scholarships annually. The proposal is also seeking to get access to an internal CUG that will be limited to NCU so students can make unlimited inbound calls and have unlimited social media and Aeorion access. So students can use all of these unlimitedly.”

After having been a year since classes moved online, the organization sees the need for a partnership to help with the financial constraint of students.

“Because we realize that students owe so much money [to the university], we have to be able to offset some of the costs with what we’re receiving so that we’re in a better position as a university. Also, when we look at the statistics, so many students are without capable devices or system and that’s the problem, so I made the call.”

Also in the pipeline is a similar partnership with the Jamaica National (JN) bank.

“We will also seek to have a similar partnership with a bank. The bank we’re looking at is JN seeing that students have accounts with this bank. So we want to have another ATM on campus,”

Meanwhile, several students voiced their opinion on the partnership.

“I’m definitely in support of this partnership. I think it will bring forth a lot of great things in terms of opportunities and assistance to students. Seeing that Digicel is known for their admirable contributions to different schools and especially now that we’re in a pandemic and classes are online, they [Digicel] would be very useful,” said Sataja Coke, a second-year student. 

The partnership is said to provide mutually beneficial collaborative initiatives which will include increased promotion for Digicel. In exchange for financial assistance, the collaboration will provide Digicel with over three thousand customers in the form of students.