Digital centres to transform villages into cities: LGRD Minister

Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperatives (LGRD) Minister Tajul Islam on Monday said the government is willing to transform villages into cities through digital centres.

“We’re working to provide all facilities of cities to the rural people. Keeping that in mind, digital centres are working to transform villages into towns,” he said.

He made the remarks at a dialogue titled 'Innovation Talk' arranged by Access to Information (a2i) marking the 9th founding anniversary of Digital Center project in Agargaon.

“The vision of our Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is to transform villages into cities, which means taking all facilities of cities to the doorstep of rural the population," he said.

Minister Islam said the educated young generations of rural areas tend to move to cities. “This won’t happen if we manage to provide them facilities similar to cities,” he said.

He mentioned that cities like Dhaka or Chattogram cannot accommodate population of the whole country, UNB reported.

"Village residents can have the facilities of cities through digital centres. We, alongside the ICT division, are working to make that happen," he added.

The minister said they are facing some problems, especially with the availability of digital centre locations. “Yet at the union level, there are separate dedicated rooms for almost all digital centres,” he said, assuring that minor issues will be addressed soon.

Currently, there are 5,865 digital centres across the country.

State Minister for ICT Zunaid Ahmed Palak said through these centres many facilities are being provided to the rural population on digital platforms.

"We still have to include 2,800 government facilities in the digital platforms," he added, noting that the government is working tirelessly to serve the people.

"Our ultimate goal is to ensure that government services are delivered to the citizens so that they don’t have to look for them," he said.