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Dr Yee (left) presenting the MIMOS Wiwi router and JEN-ii equipment to Haji Awang Samad, one of the recipients. REDtone Chief Executive Officer Zainal Amanshah is on second left.
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10th March, 2010
KOTA KINABALU: Broadband service provider, REDtone International Berhad, is helping to narrow the digital divide among the rural community in Sabah.
Chief Executive Officer Zainal Amanshah said the company traditionally focused on offering its services to the urban community, corporate sector and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) would want to further expand its corporate social responsibility initiatives through its Connected 1Malaysia programme.
“When it comes to providing services for the community, I think that is also part of our responsibility to ensure that the digital divide does not widen too much as it is already quite wide.
“So the Connected 1Malaysia programme is our way of giving back to the people, taking the cue from the government in terms of the 1Malaysia concept,” he told reporters after extending free broadband services for six months to 30 homes here yesterday.
Zainal said REDtone would also be organising more initiatives for the people especially for schoolchildren.
“The schoolchildren are our next generation and I think it is very important to get them connected.
“It’s amazing what children below the age of 10 can do if you give them access to the world wide web, I think it’s amazing what they can achieve,” he said.
Meanwhile, State Resource Development and Information Technology Minister Datuk Dr Yee Moh Chai said the state government has spent about RM20 million to provide free training in the area of information and communications technology (ICT) over the past four years.
By end of this year, the ministry would have already provided training to some 100,000 individuals, he said.
“The ICT training programmes received overwhelming demand from the people as the majority of them were ICT illiterates. Some of them don’t know how to turn on the computer.
“The government will provide higher allocation for the programme to ensure the people continue to benefit from it,” he added.
“In order to achieve the target of 50 per cent broadband penetration by the end of the year, we have to be more aggressive to promote regular and widespread use of ICT to a wider populace and also the delivery of access infrastructure,” the minister said.
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