KARACHI: Rs700m IT projects to be outsourced, says minister
KARACHI, July 5: The Government of Sindh has made an allocation of Rs700 million for the Information Technology department for the fiscal year 2005-06, which has doubled the allocation of fiscal year 2004-05. “This amount will be outsourced to the private sector for implementation of eight different projects”, said Sindh IT Minister Syed Mustafa Kamal at a meeting at the Sir Syed University of Engineering and Technology on Tuesday.
The minister briefed in greater detail about IT promotion plans and said his department was trying to build and enhance the infrastructure according to the requirements of this era.
Last year, he said Rs350 million were spent on infrastructure and launched eight projects of the Sindh government like networking, video conferencing, development of software, information sharing by people, land for setting up internet media city, computerization of civil hospital and advocate general offices.
“We got this done by outsourcing these projects to the local private sector”, Mr Kamal said adding that this helped in the creation of jobs. This year, he said, Rs700 million worth IT projects would be outsourced.
The IT minister said Sindh was quite ahead in BOP (Business Processing Outsourcing) Industry.
He cited the example of the US, where, he said, 200 billion dollars were being outsourced with 80 per cent jobs going to the Indians during the last 8 years.
The minister referred to the Call Centre Conference in July in Karachi last year and again on May 7 this year and said we made our presence felt in the BPO industry.
The participants attending these conferences felt that Pakistan was the best place for outsourcing in BPO and call centres.
He said that Shaheen Group alone was going to have a 700 seat call centre at the Shaheen Complex.
The minister pointed out that setting up of call centres would help create tremendous job opportunities for IT people.
He said each seat in a call centre would provide jobs for three people and, thus, BPO was going to prove it the best job providing industry.
Mr Kamal outlining the IT department plans said that it was offering a 6-month training course for the jobless youth and would spend Rs55,000 to 60,000 on each trainee.
He said this project was also being outsourced, with particular emphasis on language speaking and market skills.
The minister said every trainee, on completion of the training, would surely get a job.
He said this project would save the call centres money that was spent on training.
Earlier, chancellor of the university Z.A. Nizami welcomed the minister and assured him of the SSUET’s all technical cooperation towards promoting the cause of information technology in Sindh.—APP
