May 19, 2006	Friday	Rabi-us-Sani 20, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, May 18: The government on Thursday launched a soft loan programme for its nearly five million serving and retired employees to make them computer-literate.

The multi-billion “Pak-PC” programme was launched by the Information Technology Minister Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari to provide affordable, high-quality desktop personal computers (PCs) and notebooks available to all government employees in the country.

A memorandum of understanding (MoU) in this regard was signed here at a local hotel between the IT ministry, Intel Corporation, the National Bank of Pakistan and a consultant group Bearing Point.

Computers were also given away as prize to position holders in the FSc examinations conducted by Mardan and DG Khan boards of intermediate and secondary education.

Pak PC initiative is a concerted government effort designed to provide a greater choice of affordable and functional PCs to government employees at very nominal monthly instalments, said Awais Ahmed Khan Leghari while speaking on the occasion.

This will help bridge the digital divide and build an information and communication technology (ICT) enabled knowledge based society in Pakistan.

Both the government as well as the private sector could play a crucial role in creating a skilled, educated and intelligent work force to galvanise the current developments in our country, he said adding Pak PC programme ambitiously aims at bringing Pakistan close to “one-home-one-PC” vision of the government, he observed.

He also highlighted the need of developing Urdu desktop and applications to enable the 85 per cent Urdu-literate population of the country to benefit from the internet facility.

Emphasising the need of fastest internet connectivity, Awais Leghari expressed his dismay over a slow speed of the service and asked the regulators to keep a vigil on ISPs (internet service providers) to ensure a smooth and continued service.

The government also plans to use the Universal Service Fund (USF) to take basic telephony and internet connectivity to the far flung rural areas of the country, he said adding the government was working aggressively to use USF to provide 1.5 million broadband connections within next two years.

One of the main initiatives taken by the ministry in recent weeks is the setting up of career placement offices at 25 reputed universities of the country to pick up promising IT graduates for their further absorption in the IT sector.

“We are aiming to create 200,000 job opportunities through this programme whereby we shall place young IT graduates in leading IT companies. The government will bear 50 per cent of the cost on a three-year internship-cum-training of these graduates, he said.

E-government is yet another area in which the government has invested heavily in an attempt to introduce a paper-less economy, he said. The government is also coming up with huge e-government projects in the next 6 to 12 months by outsourcing entire IT functions and processes to the local industry to create demand for IT-related work, he said.

Awais Leghari said the government considered a large-scale computer usage, a vital area for the promotion of IT-related services for which it had set up 1,100 IT laboratories in high schools across the country. Another 3,000 such labs will also be put up in schools throughout Pakistan while instructors would also be trained to run these labs in an efficient manner.

Speaking on the occasion, the NBP executive vice president, Aamir Siddiqui said the project would subsequently include all those who would have a specific criterion to benefit from this scheme adding the instalment package would start as low as Rs500 a month and will have a variety of PC packages to choose from suiting their budget, he said.