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A cashless society will have a tremendous effect on this country, including reducing crime, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley has said.
Rowley stated this Thursday at the Huawei handover ceremony where 50 tablets and one IdeaHub Interactive Smart Board were donated to the Carenage Police Youth Club and Homework Centre on Constabulary Street in Carenage.
Rowley, who called upon the country to embrace technology, said the world has transformed, and T&T needed to keep up. He said:
“I look forward to Trinidad and Tobago moving towards being a cashless society…That would have a tremendous effect on our productivity, increase our security, reduce criminal conduct, and put us alongside the best in the world…The world is going that way, and as we move in that direction, our ambition is to (also) continue to be a nation functioning in the world, selling LNG, selling methanol, and putting out people who have come from universities where they are properly trained. Government investment has been number one in education…”, he said, while also emphasising that the country must keep up with a tech-savvy world.
Rowley said it was sometimes easy to resist technology, giving himself as an example, referring to a time in the past when he was once the last person in a government ministry to insist on receiving a paper cheque instead of bank transfers.
Rowley said the Ministry of Digital Transformation was a key part of the Government’s plans for new digital infrastructure. He said:
“It is not just about the Government. It is about a society that is absorbing this technology, needing…to be prepared to use it, to be protected from it, and to ensure that we get the benefits of it—because there are huge benefits to be had.”
He spoke about “…resistance to opportunities by people like me, who have come from so far back; and we are so invested in what exists, (that we can’t) accept the change that is required.”
He said the Government understood that technology can bring “huge benefits”, and noted that some ministries are more technologically advanced than others. He stated:
“We are digitising all our databases in all ministries bit by bit, step by step. Some ministries are well ahead of others. With each passing month and each passing year, you will see a country using more and more technology and getting the benefit of the Government’s operations; the community, and the nation’s operations becoming more involved with and dependent on the technology,” he said.
Rowley said the Government has partnered with Estonia to get T&T digitised:
“We interacted with Estonia and we got an agreement to help us. Today, our Ministry of Digital transformation is …working with Estonia, helping to digitise our country.”
Rowley said there is also a move towards digitising the Licensing Division.
“We are moving to a situation where the licence plate of a vehicle…can be registered, so once you move around this country in a vehicle, the police should be able to read that license plate and in an instant, determine whether it is registered or not,” he said.
“But to do that, we have to build the digital infrastructure. And to build that infrastructure, what is required is to shut down some operations and replace them by other—better, more valuable—operations,” he said.
Minister of Sport Shamfa Cudjoe-Lewis, who also spoke at the handing over ceremony, said when she went to school, access to the internet was a luxury.
“Back in the day, access to the Internet and technology was a luxury. So take it and make use of it for your professional and personal development,” she said.
Huawei Technologies Latin America president Daniel Zhou said Huawei’s mission was to bring digital to every person, home and organisation, for a fully connected world.
“We understand how important it is to have access to technology. We know it is important to be able to use technology to learn online, and also for communication with friends, and to learn essential skills that can develop more career opportunities later in life.
“So we want to join in the efforts with the Government of T&T to end ‘Technology Poverty’, especially among our young people. We hope that our contribution of technology tools like the Ideahub and the tablets, together with the Internet connectivity, can work together with the Access Centre and other programmes,” he said. (Sunday Express)
