Morung Express News
Kohima | August 2
Union minister for DONER Mani Shankar Aiyar wants the north east states to maintain a sense of IT brotherhood so as to move forward together in IT sector. Briefing media persons during the just concluded 7th NEC Sectoral Summit on IT &IT Enabled Services and Telecommunications here, the union minister said the north eastern states need to keep constant touch with each other in IT and telecommunications related activities.
In the meantime, Aiyar said the North East India Investment Opportunity Week will take place at Bangkok by October 1-5 where all the chief ministers of the north east region will be invited to the event. He wanted the NE CMs to accompany him there so that the respective Chief Ministers can focus on the field of investment. The event will be witnessed by serious discussions in the fields of business and investment, he said.
Later, various observations were made during the summit. Stating that telephones billing system for north eastern region is operated in Kolkata and its leads to confusion and disputes which take a long time to resolve, it was observed that CGM, BSNL Dimapur informed that a subsystem in Dimapur will start functioning in NE-I Circle within next 2-3 months. Referring to problems of trained manpower in the NER, it was observed that the NEC in consultation with BSNL and other service providers will consider having a regional institute for training of technical personnel, preferably at Dimapur for meeting the requirements of telecom sector.
Also, bandwidth connectivity being poor in the North east region, under the Statewide Area Network Scheme (SAWN), 2mbps connectivity is to be provided at block level. This would cover all the eight north east states by March 2008. Finding that the north east region is rich in English-speaking and educated manpower which forms the backbone of IT and ITeS industry in the country, it was opined that the IT industry should take advantage of this highly “talented resource.”
Many of the north east states do not provide IT enabled citizen centric services at present. National Informatics Centre has to upgrade existing technical support to the North East states for e-governance. The state government should provide content as well as update regularly for this purpose apart from developing local talent, it said.
