Class XII students get free tabs from CM

***Meghalaya chief minister Mukul Sangma and IT minister AL Hek with some of the students who were given free tab by the state government on Wednesday***

SHILLONG, NOV 5: Meghalaya chief minister Mukul Sangma on Wednesday said the state government will try to make Shillong, a ‘digital-city’ and see that all schools across the state is accessible to Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) to empower the youths.

While distributing the tabs to around 25,000 students of class XII under the Student Digital Learning Aid Scheme (SDLAS) at Polo ground on Wednesday. The chief minister informed that Shillong, Tura and the tourist-hotspots of the state will soon be made digital city and digital town where people can have the privilege of getting access to internet through WiFi.

Stating all schools will also be made WiFi enabled, Sangma said, “Within a couple of months, this is going to be materialized for those identified schools in a phase manner.” He said the government want to sign an agreement with a company to implement this project of digitalizing the city, towns and schools within this month.

Stating that the scheme is design to empower the students and encourage e-learning, Sangma said, “The government is trying its best to mobilize more resources in order to be able to extend the scheme to the students studying in the secondary schools of the state.”

Sangma informed the scheme is a humble beginning of the government to connect the students with the rest of the world as Meghalaya needs to show to the world that it is also head of others despites of challenges and problems. He said, “All we need is a sense of optimism to achieve this objective.”

Sangma said the scheme is one of the initiatives taken by the government to take care of the various challenges, deficiency in term of infrastructures in the education system. He informed that in order to increase the number of trained teachers in all government schools the government has introduced a programme where scholarship of Rs 5000 is being given to teachers for pursuing training programme.

Meghalaya Information and Technology minister AL Hek said that Meghalaya is the first state in the north east to distribute latest technology mobile tablets to all class XII students both state board and central boards in the state.

According to Hek, the class XI & XII syllabi are already available in the mobile tablets. Last year, when the scheme was first launched, the government had distributed the M-Tabs to 24, 000 students.- By Our Reporter