Shas­tri Boodan

Some 10,000 peo­ple will be trained in dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy start­ing Sep­tem­ber. This was an­nounced by Tho­ra Best, the Chair­man of YTEPP Lim­it­ed when YTEPP signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MoU) with the Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion (MDT) on Mon­day.

Best said 1,000 cit­i­zens would be tar­get­ed for the first cy­cle.

She said each cy­cle lasts for four weeks and would be con­duct­ed at YTEPP’s cen­tres at Mal­oney, Fifth Com­pa­ny Moru­ga, To­ba­go, Va­len­cia and Diego Mar­tin in the first in­stance un­til the MDTestab­lish­es its cen­tres. Best said train­ing would be done in dig­i­tal skills and life skills so na­tion­als would bet­ter be able to ac­cess all on­line goods and ser­vices, es­pe­cial­ly gov­ern­ment ser­vices.

Best added that the on­set of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic forced every­one to start op­er­at­ing in a dig­i­tal world and caused many train­ing in­sti­tu­tions to re­think their method of de­liv­ery.

She said YTEPP start­ed of­fer­ing an on­line blend­ed ap­proach to train­ing in 2016.

Richard Madray, the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the MDC, said the Min­istry has a num­ber of projects in the near fu­ture to fa­cil­i­tate cash­less pay­ments, dig­i­tal iden­ti­ty, im­proved ease of do­ing busi­ness and the cre­ation of soft­ware.

Wayne Nakhid, Deputy Na­tion­al Chief, Dig­i­tal Of­fi­cer MDT, said the Min­istry is part­ner­ing with the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment to put 100 ac­cess cen­tres in place for train­ing by next year.

Nakhid said the ICT sec­tor can con­tribute 6.4 per cent to GDP by next year as T&T seeks to di­ver­si­fy its econ­o­my away from pe­tro­le­um.

Pho­to Shas­tri Boodan

MOU 02- YTEPP CEO Nigel Par­ris, left, shakes hands with the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the MDC Richard Madray fol­low­ing the sign­ing of a MOU to bring train­ing to 10,000 per­sons. Look­ing on are

Deputy YTEPP Chair­man Jesse Moss, left, YTEPP Chair­man Tho­ra Best, Se­nior Le­gal Of­fi­cer MDT Sonya Gyan, sec­ond from right, and Deputy Na­tion­al Chief, Dig­i­tal Of­fi­cer MDT Wayne Nakhid.