India aids Lanka's 'Knowledge Centres'

India gifts computers, scanners and fax machines worth LKR 13 million ($1,16,906) to 20 of the 377 Nayasalas in the island nation, reports PK Balachandran.

India has gifted computers, scanners and fax machines worth LKR 13 million ($1,16,906) million to 20 of the 377 Nayasalas or "Knowledge Centres" in rural Sri Lanka.

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Lalith Weeratunga, Secretary to the Sri Lankan President told Hindustan Times in Colombo on Saturday, that the Nayasalas (Gyanashalas in Sanskrit) were President Mahinda Rajapaksa's pet scheme which he had been working on since the time he was Prime Minister.

Impressed with the increasing use of computers in rural India, Rajapaksa told Hindustan Times soon after becoming Prime Minister in 2004, that he would go to New Delhi seeking Indian aid for a similar movement in Sri Lanka.

Weeratunga said that the President had set a target of 1000 Nayasalas to be established by the end of 2008.

The 377 th. Naya Sala was inaugurated by Weeratunga and the Indian High Commissioner in Sri Lanka, Alok Prasad, on Saturday at Tissamaharama in draught-prone South Sri Lanka.