Government of Punjab Pakistan and Microsoft Promoting IT Skills in Pakistan
Reference: E skills 360 degrees for 21st Century Employability Skills a Dream for the Province of Punjab Lahore, January 27th 2006 http://www.unitar.org/icwfd/info/lahore.htm Microsoft to invest $10m in Punjab The News, March 17th, 2005 http://www.pitb.gov.pk/PressReleases/Microsoft_1April_2005.asp E skills 360 degrees for 21st Century Employability Skills a Dream for the Province of Punjab http://icwfd.org/n15.html Can Pakistan afford this reckless spending amidst of massive earthquake destruction, its commitment towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals and poverty alleviation through ICTs? At the same time the Government has created an Open Source Resource Centre spending millions on the promotion of Free and Open Source Software (for e.g. 60 Million on just one project) Through This aristocratic project costing millions of dollars/billions of rupees by Government of the Punjab is working to promote proprietary software organizations like Microsoft in collaboration with UNITAR-United Nations Institute for Training and Research that is surprisingly against the agenda of United Nations promoting FOSS in developing countries for reducing digital divide and alleviating poverty and achieving the MDGs. In partnership with the Government of the Punjab are the International Commission on Workforce Development. Food for Thought: -From where will all this money come and who will pay the loans back, our future generations? -Through the promotion of Proprietary Software, aren't we putting the people of Punjab in the Software Piracy Trap? The amount sums up to 1 Million People! -Would all these people be able to purchase proprietary software licenses to implement their skills developed through this programme? -Should we believe this is the right way to overcome the digital divide? A question mark for the FOSS Community Activists, IOSN, FSF, OSI, Open Source Resource Centre, others advocating the use of FOSS and those who attend conferences and consultations from Pakistan presenting large figures of trainings and various programmes at Asia OSS, FOSSAP, WSIS etc! Regards ----------------------- Fouad Riaz Bajwa General Secretary - FOSS Advocate FOSSFP: Free & Open Source Software Foundation of Pakistan R Secretariat FOSS Resource Centre - FOSSRC 5-A, 1st Floor, 32-M, Manzoor Plaza Civic Centre, Model Town Extension Lahore-54700, Pakistan Cell: 92-333-4661290 Tel: 92-42-8496645 E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] URL: www.fossfp.org ; www.ubuntu-pk.org Disclaimer: This e-mail message is intended for its recipient only. If you have received this e-mail in error, please discard it. The author of this e- mail or FOSSFP: Free and Open Source Software Foundation of Pakistan (R) takes no responsibility for the material, implicit or explicit. _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
