Putrajaya urged to provide special allocations to connect PoP facilities to schools in S’wak

KUCHING (Nov 27): The Sarawak government has urged the federal government through the Ministry of Communications and Digital or Ministry of Education to provide special allocations for connecting works of Point of Presence (PoP) fibre optic cables along with internet service subscriptions to schools.

Utility and Telecommunication Minister Dato Sri Julaihi Narawi said this is to ensure that school staff and students can benefit from the PoP facilities’ internet services.

“The PoP project implemented by the federal government through the Ministry of Communications and Digital involves the development of fibre optic infrastructure in rural areas.

“PoP only uses the location of schools as a point of reference because usually in rural areas where there is a school, there is a community settlement either in a village or a longhouse,” he said when winding up his ministerial speech at the State Legislative Assembly (DUN) Sitting here today.

He said under Phase 1 of PoP, a total of 60 locations have been completed while another 681 locations have been identified under Phase 2.

“It is currently being implemented and scheduled to be completed in stages by 2025,” he added.

He said with the implementation of this PoP project, schools and premises within a 2.5 km radius of the PoP location will have the opportunity to subscribe to high-speed internet services from Internet service providers.

On a related matter, Julaihi said 45 Digital Community Centres (DCC) operated by the Sarawak government and 133 Digital Economy Centres (PEDi) under the supervision of the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) have been operating throughout Sarawak.

“DCC and PEDi aim to help rural communities become proficient in ICT and digital entrepreneurship.

“A total of 23 new PEDi will be built in Sarawak next year,” he said.

He noted that to date, over 266,000 users have benefited from the programmes and training provided through DCC and PEDi.

“Of the total number of users, more than 6,000 users are entrepreneurs who have followed various digital entrepreneurship trainings at DCC and PEDi to improve skills in using digital platforms to expand their business,” he said.