Sean Nero

T&T needs more soft­ware de­vel­op­ers, says Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dr Bhoe Tewarie.In an in­ter­view at Di­gi-Da­ta Sys­tems Ltd's re­cent 30th an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, the min­is­ter said US-based IT con­sult­ing firm Medul­lan had been search­ing for 40 lo­cal soft­ware de­vel­op­ers, but found less than ten per cent of that num­ber."Imag­ine we have all these en­gi­neers com­ing out of uni­ver­si­ty and we have all these com­pa­nies that are in­volved in ICT and yet we do not have any apps ca­pa­bil­i­ty in this coun­try. If we want to be in the new world we al­so have to un­der­stand how to cre­ate the ca­pac­i­ty in or­der to do that," Tewarie said.

For T&T to stay com­pet­i­tive, he said, there must be fo­cus on grad­u­at­ing more tal­ent in de­mand ar­eas. Soft­ware de­vel­op­ment and the cre­ation of ap­pli­ca­tions are two cru­cial ar­eas, he said.It was for this rea­son Gov­ern­ment es­tab­lished an ap­pli­ca­tions lab at the Cen­tre of En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment at Cariri in Freeport. To com­ple­ment that, the state al­so en­tered in­to a part­ner­ship with Mi­crosoft for es­tab­lish­ment of a Mi­crosoft In­no­va­tion Cen­tre.

Tewarie said the ap­pli­ca­tions lab is go­ing well and new in­no­va­tions have been de­vel­oped, but the cen­tre is in its in­fan­cy stage. It will be for­mal­ly launched in Oc­to­ber by a se­nior ex­ec­u­tive of Mi­crosoft."We have just iden­ti­fied a $50 mil­lion fund to fu­el in­no­va­tion in this coun­try. What we want to do is, if you have an in­no­v­a­tive idea in your com­pa­ny, if your com­pa­ny is will­ing to put a dol­lar, Gov­ern­ment is will­ing to put a dol­lar and you can bring which ever re­searcher or de­vel­op­er to work with you. Tech­nol­o­gy is a very im­por­tant thing and in­no­va­tion is crit­i­cal for the fu­ture of de­vel­op­ment," the min­is­ter said.