October 13, 2006	Friday	Ramazan 19, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, Oct 12: Minister for Information Technology Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari on Thursday said his ministry was working on a series of projects to provide wireless broadband services to over 100 major urban centres to lay the groundwork for provision of e- services to the public.

“We are planning to use resources from the universal service fund (USF) to take the wireless broadband internet service to at least 100 towns with up to half a million population as a way to increase awareness about using IT as a tool to improve socio- economic conditions,” he said at a meeting with a five-member delegation of a multinational software company.

He said the USF would become operational in about a month and the World Bank had also agreed to provide a sum of $125 million to fund any project to increase universal access in the country.

He said the provision of about 20 public services electronically would involve massive investment and the government would like to outsource the provision and subsequent handling of these services to the private sector to add value to the local industry.

Mr Leghari said the IT ministry would also invest heavily in the content development in local languages and efforts would be made to use Urdu as a medium of distribution of the public services.

He said there was a need to introduce low-cost personal computers to the literate population, especially students and government employees, and his ministry would consider providing incentives for any such initiative.