Keetmanshoop mayor McDonald Hanse believes increased internet access will improve examination results, commercial activities and economic growth. The politician made the remarks last week during the launch of the free Wi-Fi community project in the town.
“Today is the culmination of a lot of dreaming, hard work and determination by council and its Information Communication Technology (ICT) partner Leo Canopus,” the first citizen said.
“Personally, the most salient selling point was the reported difference the pilot project made in the lives of students living in the TransNamib residential area in Tseiblaagte since last year.”
He then raised a concern that this free access to the internet for all can easily be used for wrong reasons such as social media, games and inappropriate content.
“I thus want to call on educators present to drive the message home that this free service should be used for research purposes to improve our examination results,” he urged.
Hanse explained that the project is still in its infancy, and that many of the envisaged advantages for the municipality as an entity are still untapped. “However, this dedicated team is hard at work to exploit the benefits such as remote meter readings, to name but one,” he said.
Expressing on council’s behalf their profound gratitude towards Leo Canopus, the mayor declared his trust that the relationship between the two parties will continue from strength to strength, resulting in many positive spin-offs.
In his contribution, ICT specialist Lee Mwemba said users will have unlimited access to the internet for the first month from the inception of the project.
“This will then be reduced to one gigabyte for the next month, after which new measures like remote meter readings and the identification of beneficiaries and their monthly usage will be implemented as a monitoring tool in order to ensure that all will have an equal opportunity to surf the web, and also that the flow will not be slowed down due to an overloading of the network, “ he continued.