President Mahinda Rajapaksa called for total commitment to make Sri Lanka reach the 50 per cent mark in national IT literacy by the end of 2010. The President extended this challenge while participating at a function for the declaration of 2009 as the Year of English and IT 2009 held at the President's Secretariat in the forenoon of last (13) Saturday.
Giving a clear indication of the expectations of the challenge the President stated on this occasion: "Marking the start of 2009 as a point of reference, the national initiative on English and IT will expand under my direction through a diversity of programmes and activities".
Gracing the event at the Presidential Secretariat were distinguished dignitaries including Dr. N. R. Narayana Murthy , Father of IT in India, Chairman and Mentor of Infosys Technologies Limited and famous icon of entrepreneurship in modern India, Prof. Anhai Maurya, the Vice Chancellor of the English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU) of Hyderabad - India's Centre of Excellence for the Teaching of English, Minister of Science and Technology Prof. Tissa Vitharana, Minister for Public Administration and Home Affairs Dr. Sarath Amunugama and Minister of Labour Relations Athauda Seneviratne and Secretary to the President Lalith Weeratunga.
Calling into mind the fact that the promotion of English and ICT was a two-pronged factor well planned out in the "Mahinda Chintana" policy statement for the wellbeing of the people of Sri Lanka, especially the rural folk and more particularly the youth the President stated on this occasion:
"In the 'Mahinda Chintana', my election manifesto which received the endorsement of the people, I recognized the importance of rapidly creating a knowledgeable society in our country. To make the idea of the global village more meaningful to our people, I stressed the importance of linking the villages and townships in all the provinces and districts of our country with the outside world of knowledge. And to achieve this objective, the 'Mahinda Chintana' lays emphasis on the unmistakable need to urgently equip the people, especially the youth, with proficiency in the English language on the one side and to provide them with access to internet facilities and computers through the rapid development of information technology on the other".
English and ICT will be like the two sides of the same coin in rendering the rural folk become part of the international community. The President expressed this as follows: "English and IT shall therefore be used by my government as instruments of rural empowerment; as powerful tools that could make the villages of my country a meaningful part of the global village".
While looking back at the national ICT literacy in 2005 which was 5 per cent and the present state which is 23 per cent the President looked at the future and set the target of national ICT literacy at 50 per cent by the end of 2010:
"In the use of IT for rural empowerment, we can be proud of the success achieved in the past few years. Whereas in November 2005, only 5% of the population had literacy in IT, by the end of 2008, the IT literacy rate had increased to as much as 23% with considerable progress in rural areas. The establishment of 579 rural tele-centres or 'Nenasalas' has been largely instrumental for this increase. Our goal is to increase the number of 'Nenasalas' to 1000 and to reach 50% IT literacy, by the end of 2010".
As it were taking the bull by its horns and hitting the nail on its head the president manifested thorough understanding of the problem why English had in the past not become the language of communication for development and employment promotion that it should have been long ago. The President said that the direction of English should be reversed from being a source of division between the elite and the ordinary masses. Perfectionism and meticulous concern over grammar and pronunciation while has its values should not be a "we-are-better-than-you and you-can-never-be-like-us" tool for dividing the farmer and the English toastmaster or the English Elocution teacher or the like to the extent of forgetting that all are fellow Sri Lankans.
The extra interest in English promoted by the declaration of the current year as the year of English and ICT should not have the pitfalls that earlier regimes feared. The earlier administrations had the phobia that the promotion of the knowledge of English and the that of the vernacular cannot go together, that one is a threat to the other. The President in his address on this occasion put the promotion of English and ICT in the correct perspective and expressed his determination to implement this language policy through a comprehensive national master plan supported by appropriate action plans.
The President stated:"When marching forward into the future as a single people, it is my view that the Sinhala and Tamil speaking people should engage with one another in each other's languages. I therefore visualize for the future a bilingual Sri Lankan society. Individual programmes in this direction are already being implemented in the Ministries of Public Administration and Education with the facilitation of the Ministry of Constitutional Affairs and National Integration. However, I shall be directing my officials in the near future to take steps to prepare a Comprehensive National Master Plan with disaggregated Action Plans for realizing a bilingual public service and a bilingual nation within a specified, but realistic time frame. I shall personally drive this programme with dedication and commitment, till the desired results are achieved. |
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