Some 15% of phone calls being answered by the Government Information Centre’s 1919 call centre are from Tamil speakers, according to Lalith Weeratunga, Secretary to the President of Sri Lanka. At the same time, he also noted that “President Rajapaksa has connected all government ministries and departments and ministries that needed to be connected, and [...]

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‘My dream is for Sri Lankans to get passports from home’ : Lalith Weeratunga

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Some 15% of phone calls being answered by the Government Information Centre’s 1919 call centre are from Tamil speakers, according to Lalith Weeratunga, Secretary to the President of Sri Lanka.

At the same time, he also noted that “President Rajapaksa has connected all government ministries and departments and ministries that needed to be connected, and now the North and the East are also connected to the government network and the whole country is brought together”.

Mr. Weeratunga made these comments at the “National Conference on the Role of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in Reconciliation”, which was held at the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute for International Relations and Strategic Studies (LKIIRSS) in Colombo recently.

Further, he also suggested that the goal of these online services was to “keep people out of our government offices as far as possible”, adding that his “dream is to enable Sri Lankans to obtain a passport from home”.

He also added that Sri Lanka’s national reconciliation efforts could benefit from ICT as this tool could help build relationships and strengthen ties through the improved ability that ICT provides for different groups to share, learn and otherwise interact with each other using translation software, social networks and blogs, wherein more and more stories, with different viewpoints, could be experienced.

Mr. Weeratunga also observed that “multiple websites will create close relations between the people and organizations, between organizations, between nations, and between nations and the international community. However, websites can also spread and create havoc and chaos with the spread of misinformation”.

Additionally, Mr. Weeratunga also opined that because of the country’s “1,000 ‘Nenasala’ or Knowledge Centres project many people in rural areas across Sri Lanka can access information and knowledge through the Internet. The best application of the Nenasala centres may be students learning English (now the lingua franca of the world) through the software that is installed in those computers”.

Continuing, he also suggested that ICT could be used to reduce scarcity of resources and increase efficiency of markets, and highlighted an example of this; “Tea smallholders have especially benefitted as they were not able to know the price of tea until the final auction before the use of ICTs in this way. Many years ago this information was only available to elite groups”, Mr. Weeratunga said.

Meanwhile, also speaking at the event, Dr. Charles Eugene, Senior Lecturer, Department of Computer Science, University of Jaffna, revealed that the North was “becoming a hub for ICT in the island”. He further elaborated, saying “students following ICT related subjects in the secondary, tertiary and vocational training institutes in North are steadily increasing. This can be attributed to the effective infrastructure that was provided for the development of ICT education in North, he said. A number of public institutes (schools, University of Jaffna, Vanni campus, Open University of Jaffna, Advance Technical College, Technical College and National College of Education) as well as a number of private institutes (SLIIT,MIIT,IIT,E-soft, IDM, DMI, CSC) from Colombo and many regional level private institutes are operating in north providing degrees, a range of certificate and diploma courses, and serve as facilitators for professional courses -Microsoft Certifications, CISCO certifications, etc.”

However, it also emerged that students following the Advanced Technical Education “are not being absorbed into the government sector, making most pass out students find employment in the private sector”. And that a shortcoming in the ICT education at secondary level education, with about 4,000 students sitting for the ICT subject at the Advanced Level examination, is the prolonged time to release results, exclusion of ICT in the result sheet, little relevance given to the subject at university placements or at job placements, etc. Dr. Eugene also added there was a severe shortage of trained teachers for ICT education, and even less number of Tamil medium teachers, as well as a lack of motivation for teachers to serve in rural areas in North and East provinces. He also highlighted structural discrepancies, such as the non-appointment of Assistant Directors for ICT, which were proving to be impediments to the progress of ICT education in the North.

Dr. Eugene also revealed that 71 schools in Kilinochchi, Mullaitivu and Vadamaradchi East schools lacked IT facilities at present, with institutes also facing a major problem with regard to the maintenance of ICT laboratories and other facilities.




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