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Blessings Chidakwa Mash West Correspondent
More than 500 youths from Mashonaland West province have so far registered for the on-going free Information Communication Technology (ICT) courses at the Chinhoyi Community Information Centre. In an interview, the postal manager overseeing the centre, Mr Patrick Chananuka, said youths were responding positively to the programme, which was being spearheaded by the Ministry of Information Communication Technology and Courier Services. The centre was commissioned by President Mugabe in July. Mr Chananuka said registered youths enrolled for the programme were mostly from Chinhoyi, Alaska and Shackleton.

“Youths are coming in their numbers for free training for basic ICT literacy, the short courses are still going on until mid-December,” he said. “So far we have more than 500 registered. We are currently training at least 54 people per day, quite an encouraging figure compared to numbers being witnessed at other centres across the country where the same training is also conducted. We liaised with councillors from 15 wards which cover areas including Alaska and Shackleton to assist us in the mobilisation process through giving us registers of youths in their wards so that we cater for all of them.”

Mr Chananuka said the first batch of youths had completed the training.

“The ICT basic course for youths began last Tuesday and the first batch of 122 people completed the training last Friday. An individual was being trained for five days and since we started on Tuesday we had double lessons on that day to cater for the previous one which we had lost to circumstances beyond our control,” he said.

The free ICT training, which began last week, is under way across all the information centres countrywide and guided by the Ministry of Information Communication Technology and Courier Services. President Mugabe said the establishment of the centres was in line with the global trends where every piece of information was now found on the internet.

“When we grew up, we would communicate using letters and we would wait for weeks to get that response,” he said. “But we now have internet technology, we are in a modern world and these information centres will help in as far as research is concerned.”