(Borneo Post; January 20, 2009)

KUCHING: Chief Minister Pehin Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud has proposed the setting up of a club to study ways of promoting the use of ICT among the people.

Membership of the club at State level should be made up of people from the Government think-tank AZAM; the media; ICT systems integrator and solution provider SAINS and various universities, particularly Universities Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas), he said.

IThis proposal, if realised was important because society could not afford to be IT-illiterate when Malaysia and Sarawak in particular, was aiming to achieve developed nation status by 2020.

"We have to create an environment that encourages people to feel as if they are buying electronic gadgets. Reports about ICT development in our mass media must be like any other news because it is part of changes in our lives," he said at the presentation of prizes for the Chief Minister's ICT Media Award 2008 at Wisma Bapa Malaysia here yesterday.

He said without the cooperation of SAINS, a government organ that encouraged ICT development in Sarawak, the mass media would not be progressing fast enough in tandem with the State's ambition.

"I hope AZAM, Unimas and other universities, the media and SAINS will form a small group of people called the ICT club to think of ways to encourage and popularise the use of ICT", he said.

Taib also wanted the media to report news on ICT development "as ordinary as possible" so that the ordinary people would be encouraged to feel and think of ICT as a part of their lives.

"That is what ICT news reporting is about. I hope they (media) will report all ICT development news and I hope that the (proposed) club can initiate all that are necessary.

"We have to do all these because we have no choice. Sarawak cannot develop further when its people are IT-illiterate," he said.

He said Sarawak had its telecommunication network that was improving every year and thus more and more people, including those in rural areas covered by WiFi were exposed to ICT and the internet.

He however said that WiFi could not cover a large area esspecially the interior because of logistic problems caused by the terrains.

"But I do believe that we can hasten WiFi's expansion to the rural areas if we can make the Federal Government feel more aware of the demand of ICT in these areas.

"But the task does not stop there as the biggest task of all is to get people, esspecially the youth, to be IT-literate. That is a tall order," he pointed out. When met after the function, the Chief Minister explained that the proposed club was meant for the State level though similar club at divisional level could also be set up.

Taib said without IT-literate people around it would be hard for Sarawak to move ahead and realise its K-Society concept. He reasoned that almost all information was locked in the network system.

"Hardcopy learning is not as convenient as it was before, especially in the rural areas. The use of PCs will revolutionise the way we learn. We must encourage people to be interested in IT", he said, adding that the State Government had spent hundreds of millions of ringgit in hardware development.