Paras Ra­moutar

The Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go is seek­ing clos­er con­tact, co-op­er­a­tion and sup­port with the Gov­ern­ment of In­dia to fur­ther its broad­band ser­vices through the In­di­an Tech­ni­cal Eco­nom­ic Co-op­er­a­tion (ITEC). This was re­vealed by Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan. She was at a func­tion to mark ITEC Day on Fri­day at the res­i­dence of the In­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er. "A crit­i­cal el­e­ment for the build­ing of a knowl­edge-based econ­o­my is wide­spread ac­cess to af­ford­able high speed broad­band ser­vices through­out the coun­try. Cur­rent­ly, the Gov­ern­ment is ex­plor­ing dif­fer­ent in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tives which have been suc­cess­ful­ly utilised in oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions to fa­cil­i­tate the pen­e­tra­tion of broad­band ser­vices through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go," she said.

"The im­ple­men­ta­tion of an en­hanced broad­band strat­e­gy and plan will in­volve a pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship (PPP) ap­proach, the de­ploy­ment of in­cen­tives aimed at en­cour­ag­ing for­eign and do­mes­tic in­vest­ment and the util­i­sa­tion of Uni­ver­sal Ser­vice Fund­ing for ac­cess 'build-out' in un­eco­nom­ic or un-served ar­eas," she said. Among those ad­dress­ing the func­tion were act­ing pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate, Sen­a­tor Lyn­di­ra Ou­dit, Hon Ruben Meade, Pre­mier of Mon­ster­rat, chief sec­re­tary of To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Orville Lon­don and In­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er Shri Malay Mishra.

The Gov­ern­ment of T&T is com­mit­ted to a pro-com­pe­ti­tion pol­i­cy in the de­liv­ery of ser­vices, and in this re­gard, is mov­ing for­ward with ur­gency to­wards the strength­en­ing of the leg­isla­tive frame­work to en­sure reg­u­la­to­ry over­sight of com­pe­ti­tion is­sues with a view to en­cour­ag­ing healthy com­pet­i­tive be­hav­iour, Seep­er­sad-Bachan added. She re­ferred to the Gov­ern­ment of In­dia White Pa­per pub­li­ca­tion Broad­band to Pan­chay­ats of Au­gust 2010 that the Gov­ern­ment of In­dia is work­ing to Em­pow­er the 250,000 Pan­chay­ats (vil­lage coun­cils) in Rur­al In­dia by "de­moc­ra­tis­ing in­for­ma­tion" for trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty, col­lab­o­ra­tions, train­ing, man­age­ment and de­cen­tralised de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

"I un­der­stand that these Pan­chay­ats per­form a very im­por­tant func­tion as they act as the foun­da­tion nodes of in­for­ma­tion col­lec­tion and dis­sem­i­na­tion and the ser­vice de­liv­ery points for Gov­ern­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion. "It is the view that broad­band will en­able wider pub­lic ac­cess to gov­ern­ment in­for­ma­tion, which is a pre­req­ui­site of good gov­er­nance and al­so lead to ef­fec­tive ad­min­is­tra­tion and mon­i­tor­ing of qual­i­ty of de­liv­ery of gov­ern­ment pro­grammes as well as pro­vide a plat­form for de­liv­er­ing ap­pli­ca­tions," Seep­er­sad-Bachan added.

"Ser­vices such as birth cer­tifi­cate, death cer­tifi­cate, lands records, po­lice re­ports, school ad­mis­sions, health records, court pa­pers, gov­ern­ment doc­u­men­ta­tion, re­new­al of li­cences, tax sub­mis­sions, etc can be fa­cil­i­tat­ed through broad­band con­nec­tiv­i­ty. It will thus en­rich G2C (Gov­ern­ment to Cit­i­zens) and C2B (Cit­i­zen to Busi­ness) in­ter­ac­tions lead­ing to greater col­lab­o­ra­tions. The min­is­ter added that this was what the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go is al­so work­ing to­wards achiev­ing. "Us­ing the tech­nol­o­gy to de­vel­op what we have termed a 'one-stop-shop' ap­proach to al­low cit­i­zens to ac­cess the very ser­vices that you have men­tioned in your White Pa­per."