ISLAMABAD (MEDIA)
Mrs Anusha Rehman Khan Chair National ICT Fund board meeting. Mrs Anusha adviced company to enhance reserch and development activities. Universal Services Fund (USF) announced that it will establish tele centers in the rural areas across Pakistan. Ms. Anusha Rehman, Minister of state for IT, chaired a meeting in this regard yesterday.
Universal Service Fund has already deployed several telecenters as pilot, however, company is till running the project on pilot basis before running it on full scale.
Telecenters will offer local community with state of art computer equipment and broadband facility. Several e-services will be hosted on the infrastructure to facilitate people of un-served, underserved and far flung areas.
The programme will be run all over the country and special consultation will be undertaken with provincial governments to cater to their specific requirements, to be incorporated in the telecenters’ project.
Tele center is a shared site – with few computer machines equipped with internet access — that provides public access to information and communication technologies: A public place where people can access computer, internet that enables them to gather information, create, learn and communicate with others while they develop essential digital skill.
It is envisioned that the tele center project will facilitate e-services including e-health, e-learning, e-commerce, e-agriculture etc. in rural areas; it will create local employment and entrepreneurship opportunities and extend broadband to provide distance education and ICT literacy.
The tele center in addition will house biometric verification of SIM cards, birth/death registration and computer training to the youth of the nation, the expected roll out extents to Union council level in un-served and underserved areas of Pakistan.