Advisor to Prime Minister for Information Technology Latif Khan Khosa Friday said the government was taking steps to cultivate mutual cooperation with China aligned with the vision and policy of Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto Shaheed. He expressed these views while addressing the participants of a ceremony held to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between National Telecommunication Corporation (NTC) and Huawei Technologies Pakistan.
Chairman NTC, Brig. (Retd.) Mirza Babar Aziz Beg and Chief Executive Officer of Huawei, Pakistan, Alan Wang also addressed the meeting while agreement signing ceremony was spectated by Advisor to Prime Minister for Information Technology, Muhammad Latif Khan Khosa and Secretary IT Naguibullah Malik. The MoU would facilitate the supply, installation, testing and commissioning of DWDM and next generation SDH equipment on key turn basis to the NTC by Huawei.
Khosa said the late PPP leader wanted to establish close, friendly and brotherly ties with China. “We consider China as a time-tested comrade and a brotherly nation which stood by us in all weather conditions. Let us wipe out barriers involving the peoples of the two nations which want peace with the whole world with admiration,” he asserted. He said Pakistan supported Chinese position on Taiwan and Tibet. He said Pakistan was excited to provide safe path to Chinese exports to be sent to the Middle East and rest of the World through Gawadar Port by means of the Coastal Highway.
“With unremitting dedication, Ministry of Information Technology will keep running more productive programmes for the promotion of IT and Telecom linked services, in tune with the fundamentals and vision contained in the manifesto of the PPP as declared by Shaheed Benazir Bhutto,” he added. He said during the present government’s tenure, the IT sector is achieving unprecedented successes and its benefits are being passed on to the ordinary citizens of the country. It has now become essential to pursue a futuristic approach to achieve sustainable growth for the sector, he added. He said it was a great event for NTC to ink the agreement for the project of deploying DWDM in its backbone.
“Since inception 14 years ago, NTC has grown with a fast pace and has proved to be a vibrant organization in public sector. Especially, in the last two years, it has prepared a development plan and has initiated implementation on a fast track to keep abreast of the private sector,” he added. “I would also like to commend the efforts of NTC management to accomplish this task of inking agreement for up gradation of its network in a most transparent manner on unprecedented cost of only Rs. 300 million,” he said. He said NTC needs a secure and reliable way, fully understanding the importance of security and resilience in telecommunication services for enhancing the efficiency of the government and has always strived to introduce latest technologies in the telecom field for effective and efficient provisioning of telecommunication services, be it voice or data, bandwidth or co-locations. “But security is a costly business and requires huge investments.
We are willing to extend all out help to NTC to setup secure networks in collaboration with foreign governments, as security of our motherland cannot be compromised at any cost,” he added. He expressed a hope that Huawei (Pakistan), who have been chosen to be partner in this project of prime importance to the Government of Pakistan, will accomplish the task in a most professional manner and will meet all the deadlines set to them. Keeping the repute of Huawei (Pakistan) in mind, I am sure that they will come up to the expectations set for them, the Advisor added
Via Business Recorder
