One out of every 5 households in Sri Lanka had a computer in 2014 – SL Census Dept.
At least one computer was available in 22 per cent of households last year – meaning one out of every five households in Sri Lanka has a computer, a new islandwide survey has revealed.
According to survey findings released recently by the country’s Department of Census and Statistics (DCS), this percentage is about 36 per cent in the urban sector while the rural and estate sector show 20.4 per cent and 4.6 per cent, respectively. The highest availability is in the Western Province (33 per cent) while the lowest availability is reported from the North Central. Over the survey periods from 2004 till 2014, the overall percentage has increased sharply from 3.8 per cent to 16.6 per cent.
At the same time, the DCS bulletin also revealed that “65 per cent of households have acquired the first computer during the last five years (2010 – 2014) and the rural sector shows a higher recent acquisition (68 per cent) than the urban sector (55 per cent)”.
Meanwhile the DCS survey showed that Sri Lanka’s overall computer literacy rate has been recorded at 25.1 per cent for the January 2014 to June 2014 period.
Part of a series of surveys that has charted computer literacy trends periodically since 2004, this most recent survey has signalled an overall, 5 per cent increase in computer literacy in the island nation between 2009 and 2014.
Entitled the DCS “Computer Literacy Statistics – 2014″ bulletin, this report also identified the highest computer literacy rate (34.6 per cent) to be among residential sectors. Further, it also revealed that the computer literacy rate for the Rural and Estate sector was 23.8 per cent and 6.2 per cent, respectively.
Interestingly, the 2014 survey results showed an approximate increase of 10 per cent points for almost all provinces between 2006/2007 and 2014. Not making the cut were the Uva Province (from 9.9 to 17.1 per cent), and North Central (from 8.9 to 15.3 per cent), while statistics for the North were only gathered for the first time in 2014.
Additionally, the DCS bulletin also shed some light on true definition of computer literacy by stating the following: “A person (aged 5-69) is considered as a computer literate person if he/she could use computer on his/her own. For example, even if a 5 year-old child can play a computer game then he/she is considered as a computer literate person”.
Also added, the “surveys were in 2004, 2006/07 and 2009 and latest is in 2014. This bulletin exposes the major findings of the first six months starting from January to June in 2014… For the current analysis a nationally distributed sample of 12,500 households with 35,818 persons aged 5 – 69 years were enumerated”.
The survey also revealed that the “majority of those who are computer literate have received training from private institutions or school/university. The training received through government training centres is comparatively low (5.9 per cent)… (Also depicted) about 10 per cent of the population aged 5 to 69 years uses the Internet facility at least once during last 12 months. Urban sector, where the facilities are largely available, shows highest usage of both e-mail and Internet among the other sectors”.
Elaborating further, the report also indicated “(different) usage patterns of Internet usage can be observed among provinces. Western Province shows the highest percentage (17.5 per cent) of population using Internet while North Central shows the lowest percentage (4.3 per cent)”.
It also showed that in terms of Internet and Email usage, the Western Province had the highest usage (17.5 per cent and 14.9 per cent, respectively), followed in second place interestingly by the newly-development Northern Province with 11.2 per cent and 8.3 per cent, respectively.
(JH)