President Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum and President, All Karachi Industrial Alliance, Mian Zahid Hussain has said Internet should be used as a tool to lift people out of poverty in Pakistan.
The country could benefit from Chinese experience which pulled 700 million people out of poverty with the help of some tools including Internet, he said in a statement. Pakistan should provide free Internet to women, students and small traders while cellular phones should be used for education, he suggested.
He said there were 150 million mobile users in Pakistan, of them 55 million use broadband.
Mian Zahid Hussain said that taxes should be reduced on Information Communication Technology (ICT) services and duties on cell phone import should be reduced to help empower the poor.
He said that China had planned to eradicate poverty by next year by connecting people of remote areas through Internet, while the same was helping in improvement of education, agriculture, industry, and trade there.
The former minister noted that 5G network would help China create eight million new jobs while the whole country could be covered by the latest network services in three years.
Pakistan could also improve ICT infrastructure to ensure rapid development and to reduce poverty.
He said that ease of doing business should be promoted, the legal framework should be improved, technology parks should be established, research and development should be promoted, and an action plan should be immediately finalized to reduce poverty.—APP
