African post offices to have internet and e-mail

All the 389 post offices countrywide are to have Internet by June.

Besides, the government expects all primary schools to be on the Internet by 2006. Already, he said, 69 post offices have the facilities.

The public will have access to advanced communication through e-mail at a reasonable fee in line with the government’s spirit of promoting information technology, Transport and Communications minister John Michuki said.

The minister was handing over an ambulance to a health centre in his Kangema constituency, Murang’a district.

Asked how far-flung schools without electricity would afford the technology, he said the government was giving priority to primary and secondary schools in its rural electrification programme.

“The government considers very seriously the potential in our primary and secondary schools because it is from here that future leaders will emerge,” he explained. A meeting which he attended in Geneva, Switzerland, last week decided that African governments promote computer literacy for anyone with basic education, he added.

IT, he said, would be extended to the rural areas to cover at least 50 per cent of the population.

The crowd had waited for hours for the arrival of Health minister Charity Ngilu, who was to grace the occasion.

Those who had turned up started walking away as there was no explanation of her lateness.

But Mr Michuki and the district health officials, led by the medical superintendent, Dr Kimani Mwago, arrived at 4pm to save the situation.

The minister conveyed Mrs Ngilu’s apology that she was held up in an emergency meeting with provincial medical officers.