Communications minister Hon Dr. Edward Omane Boamah Thursday officially opened an Enhanced Community ICT center in Tongo in the Upper East Region under the e-government platform project.
The facility which was constructed by the government of Ghana in partnership with Huawei is expected to enhance the teaching and learning of ICT for pupils, students and also made available to the general public and institutions for capacity building workshops and training.
In a short address before the commissioning of the project communication minister Hon. Edward Omane Boamah reiterated government’s commitment to enhancing the teaching and learning of ICT at all levels of education and for everyone in every place in Ghana. He disclosed that the Tongo ICT center is the 15th out of the 21 of same project constructed across the country within one year. He added that the eastern corridor fiber optic backbone project which is 780 kilometers in length and cutting across the upper east region to Bawku and cuts through over 120 communities is in progress and when completed will provide a high speed internet broadband access to people including Tongo.
“The next stage of the IT enabled services which we are deploying because we believe that the jobs must also chase people in the rural and sub-urban communities instead of people migrating from the rural to the urban centers. Even though we are constructing an 8 million dollar business process outsourcing facility in Accra, our expectation is that through the provision of these enhanced community information centers we will be able to train the requisite human capital that will be able to support such IT enabled services as and when they become available in this district” he said.
The management of the facility according to him will be done by people from the Talensi area so as to create jobs for the talented youth in the area.
“The talensi district is blessed with talented young men and women and so you make yourselves available. We will also ensure that the people who are going to manage this center are people from this community so that they will just not be teaching those who can interact with them only in English but even if you cannot speak the English language but you are demonstrating readiness and willingness to learn then they will be able to teach you in a language you are able to understand” he added.
The District Chief Executive for Talensi district Hon. Edward Awenore in an exclusive interview with A1 radio said the assembly will ensure that the facility serves its purpose by rolling out a special program that will involve students and pupils from all schools in the district to use the facility to enhance their knowledge in IT. He pledged that a high maintenance culture will be ensured to make sure that the ultra modern ICT remains intact and purposeful for many years to come.
“We are going to put much attention to this facility. Very soon we will be putting people in place like manager, cleaners and security. We will daily be visiting this place to ensure that it is kept tidy and taken good care of and anytime we get report of any damage we will quickly respond and make sure maintenance is done seriously” he told Azongo Albert.
The Director of JACNAN Company Limited, a consultancy firm to the project Mr. Atia Daniel explained that the edifice is composed of an ICT center, conference facility, business center, offices, a spacious reception plus other ancillaries that make it a multipurpose facility with a high speed internet server for both cable and wireless connection. This according to him will make it easy for the assembly and other institutions to send and receive information or have access to secretarial services.
The e-government project under which the center was constructed is part of government of Ghana’s initiatives to make governance electronic by using technology to enhance and speed up communication among government agencies.
Mr. Atia said “The government of Ghana through the ministry of communication is undertaking what we call e-government. They want to make government operations electronic and that means that they are trying to make access to information very easy and that is where the media comes in. So if you are a DCE in Bolga and you need information from the chief of staff you don’t need to travel all the way from Bolga to Accra. You can easily access information from government and that’s why we have what we call e-cabinet. So the e-government project has its components and this project is part of the components that is being implemented by Huawei. This is intended to build the capacity of the people so that when the final phase of the e-government platform project which includes linking the district assembly and other government agencies within the district on to that national data center, this will be a foundation for people who did not know about ICT or computer to build their capacity so that we will be able to make use of the internet super highway that government is trying to create for government operations.”
Present at the gathering was the Upper East Regional Minister Hon. James Zuugah Tiiga and his deputy Daniel Syme, representative of Huawei Archer, representative of the paramount chief of the Tongo traditional area and Member of Parliament for Talensi Hon. B.T. Baba.
By: Azongo Albert | A1radioonline.com | Ghana
