Progress: Efforts to help youth under way, says IT ministry

National ICT Scholarship will provide quality education in rural areas

ISLAMABAD: The Ministry of Information Technology (MoIT) said that it is making efforts to upgrade the ICT sector in the country, with several initiatives already under way.

According to an official, the prime minister’s National ICT Scholarship programme is aimed at providing quality education to the youth of rural and marginalised areas of the country.



He added that since 2013 full scholarships amounting to Rs1.1 billion have been offered to 909 students across the country to pursue ICT degrees in top universities of the country. Through the National Grassroots ICT Research Initiative, 866 final year projects have been given funding of Rs54.72 since 2013.

“The Ministry of IT has partnered with Microsoft to establish computer labs in Bait-ul-Mal women empowerment centres for girls across the country where computer skills will be taught,” said the official.

During 2013-15, 800 IT graduates and final-year students have been placed as interns at IT companies. A similar internship programme for 3,000 ICT graduates will also be launched soon.

Responding to a question, the official said, “IT interns have been trained in gaming and animation, android application development, iPhone programming, agile based mobile application development and dot net programming in 2014-15.”

He said the goal of the project was to transform innovative ideas of young teams to start-up companies through proper training.

In addition to the regular campuses, four virtual universities were established in remote areas of Jalalpur Pirwala, Makhdoom Rashid, Qadirpur Ran and Bhalwalnagar at a cost of Rs163 million. 

Published in The Express Tribune, March 18^th, 2016.

Like Business on Facebook, follow @TribuneBiz on Twitter to stay informed and join in the conversation.