Ride with Caribbean Information & Communications Technology Road Show

In an age of continuous technological advances, there are still many persons and households that don’t have basic internet access. Over the next few days, a Caribbean Information and Communications Technology Roadshow will be reaching out to those groups as well as the tech savvy to highlight the benefits of ICT. The road show also seeks to garner support from the private and public sectors to assist the government in taking ICT and energy to communities without internet access. C.E.O. in the Ministry of Energy, Science & Technology and Public Utilities, Dr. Colin Young says the formation of the new ministry is breathing new life into the annual event, which is carried out in collaboration with the Caribbean Telecommunications Union.

Dr. Colin Young, C.E.O., Min. of Energy, Science & Technology and Public Utilities

Colin Young

“ICT is now under our responsibility and one of the obvious necessities, we found out, is the use and availability of ICT throughout Belize. We recognize that there are varying levels of understanding and appreciation for ICT and as a result we partnered with the Caribbean Telecommunications Union to come back to Belize to embark on a public education campaign where we will take ICT to the districts, to the people, to the farmers, to the business owners, to the shopkeepers, to the entrepreneurs, to demonstrate to them how ICT can assist them in their everyday lives and how they can use the transformative power of these technologies to increase the efficiency of their business. We want to get to the people who perhaps have never used any technology before. We want to get to the—if we should call them the unconverted—to show them the benefits of technology that’s available and ICT, Information Communication Technology is a lot more than just the internet and so we want to take these technologies so that they can see the power that they have. There’s also a lot of people especially the older generations that are currently using some technology that they’re only—for example, they would spend quite a bit of money to own a smart phone and only use the smart phone to make calls when that smart phone has quite a bit of capacity.”

Dwight Gillett

Dwight Gillett, Policy Coordinator, Min. of Energy, Science & Technology and Public Utilities

“After Stann Creek—Stann Creek is tomorrow at the ITVET but after that we go directly to the public. We go to the Fort Cairns Market in Orange Walk on Thursday and on Friday, we go to the—I call it the Fruits and Vegetables Market in San Ignacio. That’s direct impact with the public and we have invited many businesses to partner with us because government can’t do this alone.”

Bernadette Lewis

“We are really trying to spark the imagination of not just the citizens, but of the service providers, of the governments, of the possibilities that this twenty-first century technology presents.”