KARACHI, March 4: A high-level meeting, to review progress of various Information Technology projects of the city government, was held under the chairmanship of Syed Mustafa Kamal, Sindh IT minister.

The meeting was attended by City Nazim Naimatullah Khan, District Coordination Officer Mir Hussain Ali, Sindh IT Secretary Muhammad Yahya Waliullah, EDO (IT) Khawaja Shjafique Ahmed and senior officers of provincial IT department.

The minister offered all assistance to the city government in improving its IT infrastructure projects to the town and union council level. City nazim and DCO briefed the minister about progress on the projects and agreed to remove bottlenecks in their implementation.

It was mentioned that the federal government was willing to support and fund the IT projects that could also be replicated in other cities and districts of the country.

It was agreed that there was a need to provide trained IT staff at the town and union council level, where it was lacking, so that an integrated metropolitan system to facilitate citizens using latest IT technology could be developed.

During the meeting it was realized that local assemblage of computer hardware was needed to be encouraged, as its standard was in no way inferior to that of imported products.

Number of other issues, such as establishment of an IT varsity in Karachi, besides issues related to IT institutes and IT education were discuses at the meeting.

It was decided that the city government would hire IT professionals to effectively implement the projects, and prepare a project for strengthening IT education at college level. -APP