Minister of State for IT & Telecom Mrs. Anusha Rehman has said that establishment of new technology Incubation centers across all four provinces will help youngsters to become successful entrepreneurs and earn a reasonable livelihood. She stated this while Chairing 52th Board of directors Meeting of National ICT R&d fund Co which was held here at MoIT today.
Minister said that our main policy focus is to provide quality digital and skill development training to the youth of the country and MoIT is committed to providing them all appropriate fora and tools through which they can get quality training to succeed in the growing global freelancing market.
CEO ICT R&d fund Co(“Ignite”) apprised the board that the company has received very encouraging feedback from the industry for the advertised incubation center projects and also informed the board that sealed bids submitted by more than thirty consortia comprising of dozens of companies for establishment of 04 new Incubation centers have been reviewed on technical and financial basis and board granted the approval for awarding contract to the successful bidders after due deliberation except for Balochistan.The board directed CEO “Ignite” to initiate a bidding process afresh for Incubation center to be built in Quetta, Balochistan.
The board agreed that to keep the momentum and industry interest going, RFPs will be floated for IOT, Robotics, and fin-tech specialty innovation centers at the earliest. The Minister further said that these Incubation centers will play a pivotal role in the development of ICT skills, required for employability in the sector.
The board also reviewed the status and pace of different ongoing projects of ICT R&D Fund Company.
Anusha Rehman said that the government attaches the highest priority to ICTs development to materialize Prime Minister’s vision of “Accelerated Digitization”.She directed the Company to gear up their efforts to meet given timelines for all 7 incubation centers.
Federal secretary IT Mr.Rizwan Bashir Khan, Member Telecom Mudasar Hussain, Member HR, CEO ICT R&D Mr. Yossaf Hassan and other board members were also present at the meeting.
