IT plays key role in society - minister

Ridma DISSANAYAKE

“The Information Technology sector not only plays a vital role in the world, but also in Sri Lanka’s development programme. IT plays a key role in every field in society,” Higher Education Minister S.B. Dissanayake said.

“The government has made all arrangements to provide English and IT knowledge to every university student. Plans are afoot to provide laptops to all graduates with the aim of supporting the government’s plans of making Sri Lanka the ‘Knowledge Hub of Asia’ under the “Mahinda Chinthanaya” future vision programme,” he added.

The minister was addressing the official launching ceremony of the “Future Careers Partners-2012” introduced by the Sri Lanka Association of Software and Services Companies (SLASSCOM) along with partner organizations, to further strengthen and develop future careers at the Dialog Auditorium.

They have introduced this programme together with Strategic Partner- Vocational Training Authority(VTA),Virtusa,Pearson, IFS,Zone 24/7,Millennium IT,HSBC and First Source-Dialog. The launching ceremony was held with the support of the Higher Education Ministry, Education Ministry and a large number of member companies and corporates.

“We aim to leverage the future careers platform to primarily focus on creating awareness among youths about the benefits of selecting IT or BPO as a career path. Our aspiration is to attract a large number of youths to join the fast growing IT-BPO knowledge services industry in Sri Lanka., he said.”

“All our endeavors are geared towards driving Sri Lanka to reach our national goal of becoming the number one industry to lead Sri Lanka to the knowledge economy while achieving the target of one billion US dollars in revenue and providing employment to over 100,000 by the year 2015, one of the key prerequisites of this growth to be realized is the acceleration of human resource capacity development in the industry,” said SLASSCOM chairman Sujiva Dewaraja.

Future Careers targets students aged 15-18 years and young under graduates. The platform creates a dialogue between the IT/BPO professionals and students opening vistas of knowledge sharing and experience with the future careers audience,including teaching faculty members.

Higher Education Ministry Secretary Dr. Sunil Jayantha Nawaratne, VTA Assistant Director Panitha Ratnayake, Dialog CEO Dinesh Narayanan, Global Operations-Zone 24/7 Vice President Manjula Dissanayake,IFS R D Ltd Chief Operating Officer Ranil Rajapakse, SLASSCOM Vice Chairman and Sri Lanka - Virtusa General Manager Madu Ratnayake, SLASSCOM Director and Pearson Lanka General Manager and Director Nalina Wijesundara and SLASSCOM Director and Millennium IT Director Jit Sevneviratne also participated.