President stresses focus on IT for economic stability

Anusha says mobile applications to enable
special persons to live close to normal people

ISLAMABAD: President Mamnoon Hussain on Tuesday said that focus on Information Technology (IT) for stability of national economy was must and the use of IT was the need of the hour to inform the young generation about modern learning and research trends.

Addressing the Pakistan Mobile App Awards 2016 ceremony for persons with disability at the Pakistan National Council of the Arts, the president said the government had taken many initiatives for development of information technology in Pakistan, adding that funds had been provided for initiation of different projects regarding 3G and broadband services, which were benefiting distant areas of the country. He said it would be helpful for the overall growth of the sector and would facilitate the common man.

He further said that IT parks, youth training institutions and other relevant initiatives had added a plus in recent development of information technology. For the purpose, he said that IT education has been declared mandatory in initial schooling. Moreover, initiating training programmers in various technical areas was also an encouraging factor. 

Similarly, he said delivering laptops and providing scholarships was a crucial step towards equipping our youth with modern education. He said the government and the IT Ministry were utilising all resources to provide the best facilities to disabled persons, adding that disabled persons were part of the society and serving them was our moral responsibility. He said these mobile applications had been prepared by the IT experts which could provide relief to the people with disability of speaking, hearing, seeing and other problems in their lives.

Minister of State for Information Technology Ms. Anusha Rehman Ahmad Khan said mobile application award would go a long way in developing a strong relationship between the academia, industry and the relevant government organisations and would turn out to be exemplary for the rest of the sectors of our economy. These mobile applications, she said, would enable special persons to live close to normal people with the help of mobile phones and would enable them to work and communicate with other people for daily affairs. 

Later, the president presented awards to the winners of the competition. The awards were given with cash prize of Rs300,000. To 1st position holder Dr Abdul Ghafar and his team for developing the App smart devices. Second position was won by Ms. Sumayya Munir with cash prize of Rs200,000 for developing the Tell Me App. Whereas 3rd position with cash prize of Rs100,000 was won by Hatham Nasar and his team for developing App Rollout.

Chairman PTA Dr Syed Ismail Shah said that Pakistan was already an exemplary model of regulatory and commercial success in the ICT arena. He said telecom services were accessible to over 86% of the population while 71 out of 100 people were already among the subscribers of telecom operators. “The introduction of mobile broadband services has also opened new arrays of ICT innovation, digital content delivery, entertainment and economic opportunities for the people of Pakistan”, he added. CEO Telenor Irfan Wahab Khan also spoke on the occasion.