ISLAMABAD, April 27: The federal government will provide at least one qualified computer teacher (with BCS as minimum qualification) to every public sector secondary and higher secondary school of the country.

The government will set up computer laboratories in all these schools, besides providing more than 200,000 computers to them under a project that is estimated to cost over seven billion rupees.

These decisions were taken in principal at a meeting, held here on Saturday with the federal minister for science & technology, Dr Atta-ur-Rahman, in the chair. The secretaries of IT, planning and education and the representatives of the finance ministry, the university grants commission, the four provinces and Azad Jammu and Kashmir attended the meeting.

The programme will be launched and executed by the IT & telecom division, ministry of science & technology, in phases within 24/36 months. Locally manufactured/assembled computers (Pentium III, IV, will be bought for the schools, whose lists will be provided to the ministry of science and technology by the education ministry.

Dr Atta-ur-Rahman said the decisions taken at the meeting would have far-reaching consequences for the social and economic development of the country. He added that IT education would be spread throughout the country at the government’s expenses.

He observed that the decision to buy locally manufactured/assembled computers would boost the local industry and would create more jobs.

The meeting decided that the government would provide funds for the project for the first three years, and later the provinces would be required to bear recurring expenditure from their resources.

According to the project, teachers will be offered contract jobs and a salary of Rs10,000 per month. They will be selected on merit-cum-test basis. Selection of teachers will be made from the same districts, where the schools are located.

The meeting also decided that a comprehensive monitoring mechanism would be set up at the provincial level. The governors and the administrator/chief executive of the area concerned would be required to hold a programme implementation monitoring meeting every month. “This is being done to avoid ghost schools like situation,” the minister said.

The programme procedures will be immediately initiated so that the process for recruiting teachers is completed by the end June.—NNI