THE Government of Guyana continues to place emphasis on the development of the Information Communication Technology (ICT) Sector, which has, so far, directly employed 3,000 people and has the potential to create several thousand more jobs.

Finance Minister, Dr. Ashni Singh said so Thursday, when he addressed the audience at the inauguration of the seventh cycle of the Basic Needs Trust Fund (BNTF), at Duke Lodge, in Duke Street, Kingston, Georgetown.
He reported that, within five to eight years, Guyana has moved from a position where no Guyanese was employed in that field to where it is today, with 3,000 having secured direct employment.
“And these are 3,000 jobs that would not have existed if we hadn’t taken the policy position to promote the sector as aggressively as we did,” the Minister explained.
According to him, ICT presents an important opportunity for growth in this country and the Government has, therefore, placed its development as a high priority within a number of related policy initiatives.
He said these include the liberalisation of the telecommunication sector, to ensure the most possible affordable access to bandwidth.
Content available
Singh stated, further, that increased accessibility to Information Technology (IT) has also been high on the agenda, through the construction of Government infrastructure for the delivery of e-governance services that will make the content available to the Guyanese population at large.
Additionally, he said the Administration also aims to improve exposure to ICT training by constructing labs in every secondary school in the country, several of which have already been completed.
Singh mentioned that developing ICT training capabilities in other institutions, outside of the formal school system, is also included in the policy projects, including many that have been supported by the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), particularly, under the BNTF.
He said the BNTF also includes working to improve ICT availability for the most vulnerable families, to bridge the domestic digital divide, so that it would not be available only to those who can afford.
“The access to ICT and the opportunities that arise therefrom; the advantages that arrive therefrom must not be denied to any Guyanese citizen and, in particular, any Guyanese child,” Singh asserted.
In this regard, he made special reference to the Government’s One Laptop Per Family (OLPF) Programme that has set as its objective the distribution of 90,000 laptops to the most vulnerable families in Guyana, to make sure that every home in the country has accessibility to ICT.
Mr. Albert James, from Leguan in Region 3 (Essequibo Islands/West Demerara), confirmed what the BNTF has done for the persons in the area under a computer training programme, which started there in November 2011.
Additional training
He disclosed that the first batch consisted of 28 students who graduated in basic computer science and, so far, there are 130 graduates from it, among them some employed in teaching IT while others are pursuing additional training.
James said the people of Leguan are very happy that the opportunity has been made available to them and that the intention of the Government is to make every person on the island and in the country computer literate.
He also related his own success story, since he was one of the persons who was not computer literate and had persons preparing documents for him before he grasped the chance to enroll in the scheme.
James admitted he is now proud to be computer literate and has since even purchased a computer and printer and opened a small business, where he prepares his own documentation and charges customers a minimal fee to prepare theirs.
He also teaches basic computer science to families on a voluntary house to house basis, three times weekly in the afternoons and he thanked the Government of Guyana, the CDB and BNTF for taking the training to Leguan.