04 Apr 2017

The Ministry of Youth Empowerment, Sport and Culture (MYSC) in collaboration with Botswana National Library Service hosted an Information Communication Technology (ICT) graduation ceremony under the theme Libraries and Information Technology: Bridging the Information Gap, held at Masunga main kgotla last week.

When delivering the speech, chief education officer for North East Angela Matlhape stated that the event marked the second graduation ceremony for Masunga.

She added that the emergence of computers had revolutionised the traditional society, making one wonder how life was prior to computers and their peripherals.

Furthermore, she alluded that there was no aspect of life activities to which digital processing was not applicable.The senior librarian, Ms Neo Mosweu urged the residents of Masunga and the surrounding villages to use and take care of what their library offered.

She further explained that their statistics showed that out of nearly 18 000 residents of this village, only 11 people had managed to read newspapers that were found in the library.

She stated that this statistics showed that most of people in the community were not active when it came to reading thus leading to wasting of the government money and time since the newspapers were bought.

However, Ms Mosweu said that now the expectation is that the 44 graduates would bring more life to the library and encourage other people to use and benefit from the use of computer because now they were regarded as expects when it came to computer basics.

For his part, Superintendent Gaolatlhe Ngayaya of Masunga Police Station reminded the graduates and the general public that as they ventured into the digital world which came up with technology, they should be careful.

“As you go into ICT, you should be quite aware of things like piracy, cyber bullying, cyber stalking and so many more and you should also be aware of the penalties crimes in those areas attract,” said Superintendent Ngayaya.

She said   punishments to such crimes could  lead to six months imprisonment or fines of between P10 000 to P40 000. Lastly she urged the graduates to refrain from getting over-excited with their achievements rather use this in an advantageous way. ENDS