TOP officials of the Indian High Commission here and the Guyana Government on Thursday examined the architectural designs for the US$1M ICT centre to be constructed by the Indian Government here.Minister of State Joseph Harmon, Minister of Public Telecommunications Cathy Hughes, Advisor on E-Governance, Floyd Levi and Indian High Commissioner to Guyana, H.E Shri Venkatachalam Mahalingam on Thursday examined designs for the centre to be called Centre of Excellence.

Late last month Harmon had signed a US$1 million Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Indian Government for the establishment of centre.

The centre will provide training for public sector ICT professionals to ensure the availability of a highly skilled ICT workforce, equipped with the requisite expertise to meet the increasingly complex demands of the public and private sectors.

Minister Harmon had said that the MoU caters for the creation and operation of an ICT Centre of Excellence, which will be based at the National Data Management Building at the University of Guyana Complex.

During the first two years of the project, training of trainers will be completed, following which the facility will be handed over to the Government of Guyana. “The parties will cooperate in the identification of required areas of training, the establishment of a centre for training in ICT with two classrooms of 25 students each, the provision of academic materials to train up to 500 students per year for two years, among others,” Minister Harmon said.

The minister expressed thanks on behalf of the Government and people of Guyana, noting that the project will go a long way in the development of the human resources of the country. Minister Harmon said he expects that the centre will be opened within the next three to six months.

In the meantime, India’s High Commissioner to Guyana, Mr. Mahalingam, in brief comments, said that the Centre provides an opportunity for the development of the country and the people of Guyana, which his Government was pleased to facilitate.

“We have been waiting for this for a long time and finally it happened. This is only the first step. There are a lot of things that we need to do. We need to correspond with each other. We need to make the facilities available on your end… I am sure that this is going to be a real good opportunity for Guyanese to have training on various aspects of IT Management and we look forward to working together,” Mr. Mahalingam said.

The construction of the centre was announced by India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi at the BRICS Summit in 2014, in Brasilia regarding the establishment of Information Technology (IT) Centres in the region. Modi had indicated then that Guyana would be the first country in which they would establish an IT Centre. During his speech at the BRICS Summit back in July 2014 Modi had noted that almost 250 students from South America, have been taking courses in India every year under its International Technical and Economic Cooperation programme. “I however believe that this is not enough. We intend to substantially increase the same. To share India`s expertise in Information Technology, we will establish Centres of Excellence in Information Technology, in South American countries,” Modi announced at the summit.

He said then that India also offers to expand cooperation, in areas like Tele-medicine, Tele-education and e-Governance. “We extend our Space capabilities, for weather forecasting, resource mapping and disaster management.”