Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal on Wednesday said that the benefits of information technology should be taken to the grassroots level and it should benefit people in the day to day activities.

Inaugurating the Midas CAN Softech 2010 at Direction Exhibition and Convention Center at United World Trade Center in Tripureshwar on Wednesday, PM Nepal said the usage of software, which is limited to official works at present, should also benefit the rural folks.

Stressing on the government initiative to impose ban on porn sites, PM Nepal also sought support of IT professionals to implement the restriction.

“Our neighboring countries India and China have developed a lot in IT sector. We should be able to take benefit from their progress,” he added.

Referring to the government´s e-governance project, the PM expressed the hope that they would become successful in overcoming all the difficulties in systematizing all government data. He also assured necessary help from the government for the enhancement of the software industry.

After the inauguration, PM Nepal visited all the 58 stalls at the exhibition and listened to the presentation of the exhibitors with keen interest.

UCPN (Maoist) Chairman and former prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, in a video message, extended wishes for the grand success of the event. Dahal said he was optimistic that the event would be able to cater to the need of people in rural areas.

Acting President of Nepali Congress, Sushil Koirala, addressed the inauguration through video conferencing, while UML Chairman Jhalanath Khanal sent audio message for the inauguration ceremony. Both the leaders emphasized on the need to promote IT sector for the overall development of the country.

Addressing the ceremony, Manohar Kumar Bhattarai, vice president of the High Level Commission for Information Technology, expressed the hope that the software industry would become one of the largest foreign currency earners for our economy.

“As our domestic demand is very low, we should explore the possibility of exporting our products to international market,” Bhattarai said, urging the developers not to compromise on quality.

CAN has been organizing the event for the last three years with the objective of raising awareness about software and contributing to the development of software solution and services.

“We also have stalls of software developers from India and Bangladesh. We are hopeful that domestic software developers will get to learn something from them,” CAN Secretary Narayan Neupane said.

 

Apart from professional developers, students from Institute of Engineering, Tribhuvan University; Nepal Engineering College, Pokhara University; Purvanchal University; and Kathmandu University are also presenting their software projects in the four-day event.

The event drew about 8,000 visitors on the first day, according to the organizers.

Source: Myrepublica.com