KARACHI, Nov 1: Sindh Minister for Information Technology Syed Mustafa Kamal has said that four development projects of the provincial information technology department will be completed this year and other nine projects will be accomplished in the mid of next year.

Talking to newsmen on Monday, he said that the Sindh IT department had planned to complete 13 projects of worth Rs500 million by the end of current fiscal year. He disclosed that a Singaporean company had announced to invest 10 million dollars in IT sector of the province.

He said that establishment of IT Park in Karachi, e-government pilot project, basic training of 15,000 employees of Sindh government and designing of website and web- portal of the provincial government were the four projects which would be completed by December 2004.

Mustafa Kamal said that 80 per cent work on the said projects had been completed and the remaining would be done within a couple of months.

On e-government project, he said five departments had been interconnected through networking system and basic training of computer had been provided to their employees along provision of 200 PCs to these departments.

About nine other projects, he said that most of them would be executed with the cooperation of federal government. The federal government would contribute 75 per cent and provincial government would give 25 per cent financing in this connection.

Other projects include introduction of IT-based administration in all districts of Sindh, IT training to 1,000 unemployed graduates, automation of 32 monotechnic and polytechnic colleges and polytechnic centres, computer labs in schools and colleges, establishing IT community internet resource and awareness centres, internet set for Sindh government, setting up IT centres in all offices of DCOs, IT Excellence Centre in Karachi, HR Database for Sindh government and e-government project for Sukkur. He said hiring of EDOs in IT departments of 16 districts would be done this month.-PPI