Sri Lanka's new telecentres to take ICT to masses
The Sri Lankan government has set up 64 'Nenasalas' or ICT service delivery centres in three districts of the country's eastern province. Providing content in both Sinhalese and Tamil, these centres offer a range of services including high speed internet, telephone, computer training classes and course syllabi.
In its efforts to provide better facilities in the ‘liberated’ areas like with the rest of the country the Sri Lanka Government has set up 64 Nenasalas which are ICT service delivery centres in the eastern province.
In this endeavour of ‘normalisation’, which is concomitant with the government’s effort to enable all its citizens enjoy the optimum benefits of the most advanced developments in Information Communication Technology, by now a total of 64 Nenasalas have been established in the Eastern Province. Out of these 32 are in the Ampara district while the Trincomalee and Batticaloa districts have 16 Nenasalas each.
These form part of the 570 Nenasalas (out of the 1000 earmarked for the near future) which have been set up throughout the country. A majority of these follow a community model where these are established in a central place of a village such as a religious institution, public library or a community organisation.
These Nenasalas provide a range of services including high speed internet to access national, local and international information; e-mail; telephone; computer training classes and other ICT related facilities.
Content essential to the rural community is available in Sinhalese and Tamil to all users. The Nenasalas act as resource centres to the village to disseminate knowledge and share information through the internet with the ultimate goal of reducing poverty, peace building, economic and social development and improving the IT literacy rate of the country.
The Nenasalas are set up by the government through its ICT arm, the Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) which functions under the Presidential Secretariat.
The idea comes within the six major programmes of ICTA all of which are under the government’s e-Sri Lanka initiative which ICT to foster social integration, peace, growth and poverty reduction.
ICTA Nenasala Project Manager S. Gavashkar said that the public could benefit from the facilities for e-mail, photocopy, fax, computer application, information technology training and retrieval of information on examination results and syllabi of courses.
