Kathmandu, December 30:

Minister for Environment, Science and Technology Ganesh Shah today issued a clarion call to constructa better and prosperous nation.

Speaking at a programme organised to donate laptops to Yagyamati Secondary School, Kapan, under a pilot project, ‘Computing-One-On-One (CO3)’, he said, “Every citizen should be computer literate and every individual should have access to Information, Communication and

Technology (ICT).” The minister added e-literacy should reach every corner of the country.

There is a need of e-governance to strengthen and make the legislative body more efficient. Sectors such as the parliamentary system and the judiciary system which are traditional and using outdated methods should be computerised and transformed through digital technology, said Minister Shah, adding, “The government has begun the process of e-governance and would slowly march to e-parliament and e-judiciary,” he added.

Distributing laptops to children under the project CO3 -a joint collaboration of Intel and Microsoft with its local partners Unlimited Technologies and the Department of Education- he said children should be familiarised with the technology from the very beginning for the vision of an e-Nepal to come true and appreciated the support of the corporate sector for the social reform.

Intel had supported the project by sponsoring 50 laptops, one for each sixth grader of YSS.

Allen Bailochan Tuladhar, country manager of Unlimited Technologies, local partner of Microsoft, said the need of the time was not to learn to use computer during school years, but to learn through computers. He stressed the necessity of digital literacy for the development of the nation and expressed commitment of Microsoft and its partners to accelerate digital literacy programmes in the coming days.

There is a need of producing globally competent citizens, said Dipendra Bikram Thapa, secretary for the Ministry of Education. He added that the government was focussing on ICT intervention in education and projects of digital literacy would be carried out all over the country based on the result of the CO3 pilot project.