ISLAMABAD, May 26: Minister for Information Technology Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari has called for setting up a training institution-cum-centre of excellence having linkages with telecom institutions all over the world.

He expressed these views during his visit to the National Telecommunication Corporation (NTC) headquarters on Wednesday. The minister was given a detailed presentation by the NTC chairman, Rear Admiral Shahid Farooq, on the role of the corporation, its objectives, its ongoing and future projects and problems being faced in achieving the desired targets.

Mr Leghari asked the NTC to facilitate new local loop and LDI operators for economic growth of the country. He also urged the corporation to prepare viable, cost effective, revenue generating business proposals for optimum utilization of NTC assets.

"We need such business proposals to strengthen projects which require specialized human resource," he said. The minister appreciated the NTC's efforts to train its existing manpower to meet the challenging requirement of data and voice rather than new induction.

He was happy to note that the NTC, in spite being a public- sector organization, was being run on commercial and corporate lines. He, however, asked the corporation to upgrade its long haul optical fibre network to generate healthy competition in the field in the larger interest of IT and telecom sectors.

He desired that the NTC should be a self-sufficient and financially-independent organization and should generate resources to undertake its development projects while his ministry would facilitate and help the corporation by providing complete support in achieving its targets.

Mr Leghari urged the corporation to extend quality services to its customers and adopt an aggressive market strategy for providing data and telephony systems.

He acknowledged the role of the NTC in establishing and commissioning the Pakistan Educational Research Network (PERN) and emphasized the need of aggressive marketing to penetrate the private market to sell various services of NTC in the deregulated environment.

The minister appreciated the progress of the NTC in achieving high standards in discharging its responsibilities for provision of quality telecom and data services to its subscribers.