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Skills development for rural youth

by Uditha Kumarasinghe

The Skills Development Project (SDP) of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Technical and Vocational Education has launched an Information Technology (IT) project at village level to bring IT technology within the reach of rural youth.

The Rs. 250 million project is expected to provide six month IT training to rural youth countrywide with effect from January next year, SDP Project Director Dr. T. A. G. Gunasekara told the Daily News yesterday.

Initially the training will be provided at 50 training centres of the Vocational Training Authority, National Apprentice and Industrial Training Authority and the National Youth Services Council. Each training centre will be provided with computers, internet and other infrastructure facilities, he said.

He said this was rated a subsidiary project under the main Skills Development Project launched by the Ministry in association with the Asian Development Bank.

"The information gap is widening between haves and have-nots resulting in a power flow towards the elite who already possess the power and weakening those who are deprived of it. This can result in increasingly poor populations, enlarged poverty and potential social disasters."

Dr. Gunasekera said there had been no systematic attempt to bring information technology to the doorsteps of rural poor.

One certified training course will be introduced and one thousand youth have already been selected to undergo this six month IT training course.

Those who successfully completed this IT training course will be selected for an IT Diploma Course which will commence in July next year. It aims to provide employable skills for rural youth. Initially this diploma course will commence at Baddegama, Hambantota and Anuradhapura, he said.

The project has also aimed at providing IT technology to the rural community through Multi Activity Centres. Each Multi Activity Centre will comprise a " Cyber Cafe" which would give access to the public to obtain the IT facilities.

The first Multi Activity centres will be set up at Galigamuwa, Bingiriya, Uva Paranagama, Weligama and Galle areas. Our objective is to set up such centres at vocational training centres countrywide, he said.

The major thrust of this IT training project is to provide state of the art IT skills for rural youth to meet the huge local and foreign demand in coming years. This IT training program is focused on fields where there is high demand such as web and e-commerce, multi media design, soft wear design, multimedia computing and date communication, Dr. Gunasekara added.

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