All dists to get hi-tech parks: PM

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday said her government would set up hi-tech parks in all 64 districts of the country with the headquarters in the capital in order to make digital services available on the doorstep of people. 

The government will launch a satellite into the space to facilitate the digital services, she told “Digital Centres' Entrepreneurs Conference-2014” at the National Parade Ground.

Around 11,000 young entrepreneurs of 4,547 Union Parishad digital centres, 321 municipality centres, and 407 ward-level centres in 11 city corporations joined the conference, organised by the Access to Information (A2I) Programme of the Prime Minister's Office.

The prime minister termed the entrepreneurs “digital boys and girls”, who are contributing enormously to building a "Digital Bangladesh".

She said that with the launch of "Bangabandhu Satellite", the internet would be faster. The process is underway to seek bids to this end, she said.  

Hasina warned all elected representatives of her party against attempts to oust these entrepreneurs from any digital centre, saying she had information that many were trying to bring in their relatives to the centres.

She assured the entrepreneurs that none would be able to oust them, and termed them the golden and devoted sons of the country. Referring to her government's contribution to IT sector, she said her administration had introduced the world's largest web portal by involving 25,000 government offices in it, on which people would readily get all kinds of government information.

LGRD Minister Syed Ashraful Islam said the government aimed to turn the digital centres into knowledge-based institutions through involving the entrepreneurs in different LGED projects. Sajeeb Wazed Joy, IT affairs adviser to the premier, said they were halfway in their journey to building a "Digital Bangladesh" by 2021.