etuktuk featured in i4d magazine
Writing by admin on Friday, 4 of August , 2006 at 7:38 pm
eTukTuk– the Sri Lankan experience
Up in the central highlands of Sri Lanka, near Kandy, I came across an amazing experiment in taking the fruits of ICT directly to the poor. The eTukTuk project is part of the Kothmale Community Radio station and Multi-media Centre. A cursory look at the eTukTuk and one would be tempted to dismiss it as just another Bajaj autorickshaw that’s as common in Sri Lanka as coconut palms. But this is no ordinary three-wheeler: inside the tuktuk is a complete radio-station and telecentre – with computer, printer, scanner, digital camera and Internet connection.
The eTukTuk is the most accessible of telecentres – it putters along the dirt roads of Kothmale, travelling to distant villages, bringing the benefits of ICTs to the homes of the people.
But how about the ‘mobile’ radio station within the tuktuk? As I assured Ben Grubb, the young Australian who oversees the eTukTuk project, a mobile radio transmitter being carted around the countryside would cause most regulatory authorities in South Asia to go ballistic. Ben grinned. “Well, the Kothmale CR is run by SLBC (Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation), so I guess it is legal here.”
There lies the rub. Kothmale CR has been around since
1989, but – in the absence of a proper community radio policy - it has yet to be replicated. In the GKP panel on ICTs for Peace, Sanjana Hattotuwa of InfoShare called such projects ‘pilots without wings’. That is, pilot projects that ‘look wonderful as long as the funding lasts,’ but which are essentially unsustainable and unreplicable.
The following is an excerpt from the article entitled When technology says ‘yes’, regulation says ‘no’ written by Sajan Venniyoor, that appeared in the August 2006 edition of the i4d (information for development) magazine. To view the complete article click here.
Category: press
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