The statement by the Mimos Bhd. director, Tengku Datuk Dr. Mohd. Azzman Shariffadeen yesterday that Malaysians should not be under the impression that they have the necessary infrastructure for the development of information technology and creating an information-based society cannot be more timely.
Mohd. Azzman said: “We have not arrived yet. We have a long way to go and we should not think we have already achieved a high level of sophistication in information technology.”
He said that the fact that there were parabolic dishes even in the most remote parts of Sarawak did not mean that Malaysia was an information-rich society
Mohd. Azzman’s reminder that Malaysia has still a long way to go in IT is very timely and important because the hypes about Malaysia making a quantum leap into the cyber era, especially through the proposed Mutlimedia Super Corridor (MSC) - touted as the only one of its kind in the world - gives the impression to many Malaysians that the country is in the forefront of information technology.
Malaysia is not only seriously lagging behind other countries in IT, Malaysians also have a long way to go to develop national consciousness about the critical importance of IT for Malaysia’s future prosperity.
I call on the government to launch a national IT awareness campaign with a two-fold objective - to make all Malaysians realise the critical importance of IT for the nation’s future and that Malaysia is still very backward in IT.
Such national awareness about the critical importance of IT and the need for Malaysians to catch up in IT are in fact the preconditions for creating an information-rich Malaysian society.
Last weekend, the director of teachers’ education in the Education Ministry, Sa’ari Hassan, said in Kuantan that the government would train a total of 1,750 teachers as principal instructors for Smart Schools.
This is a pathetic figure, considering that there are 250,000 teachers in the 8,500 primary and secondary schools in Malaysia who must be trained in IT so that they could guide the new generation of Malaysians students to be literate and efficient in IT.
It is reported in today’s newspapers that the Singapore government has new plans to equip schools with computers at a cost of S$1.5 billion in the next five years, with every primary school having 100 computers.
What would be the position of the primary schools in Malaysia by the year 2,000? Despite repeated pressure by DAP MPs in Parliament, neither the Education Minister nor the Deputy Education Ministers dare to spell out details about computerisation programme for the 8,500 primary and secondary schools by the year 2,000, whether all the schools by then would be connected to the Internet and the minimum number of computers per school.
(21/11/96)