New digital TV channel by end of this year: Atta
ISLAMABAD- Minister for Science and Technology Dr Atta-ur-Rehman has said a new digital TV channel will be launched for promotion of literacy by end of this year. The project which would have capacity of four new channels has been approved, he said. The minister said: “We will not launch all the channels simultaneously, one will be launched by year’s end, while the rest will be incorportated at a later stage.”
Talking about the Virtual University (VU), he said, it has started functioning and is imparting education to the students in IT. We are using the PTV2 for the lectures. Initially, Atta said, VU has given admission to the 1000 students and established 28 tutoring centres in 18 cities of the country.
Dr Atta said the government has started a training programme for school teachers in Information Technology in collaboration with Intel and 25,000 school teachers would be trained under this programme. By December this year, about 15,000-18,000 school teachers would be provided training while the remaining 7,000 would be trained next year, he added.
To a question, he said, the government will also initiate a programme to hire 14,000 IT teachers having a degree or diploma in Computer Studies, for all the secondary and higher secondary schools of the country. This programme, he said, has been approved and will be launched in the next financial year.
Dr Atta added 14,000 teachers will be hired in phases over a period of three years. To a question, he said, the government has established universities to promote IT education in the country. He added to make these universities functional “we arranged equipment overnight and got qualified faculty from wherever it was possible”.
Source: The News
Date:6/19/2002
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