Computer Courses Leave Kazaks Cold

Far fewer people than expected have taken advantage of a drive by Kazakstan’s government to get people to enroll on state-funded computer literacy courses.



The programme, which has a budget of 15 billion tenge or 125 million US dollars and is designed to train 2.4 million people in computer skills between 2007 and 2009, only attracted 200,000 last year, according to Information Initiative, a watchdog group that is monitoring the progress of the government’s IT campaign.



The courses form a key part of a strategy aimed ultimately at giving internet access and skills to a fifth of the country’s 15 million population.



At the heart of the programme is a set of courses ranging in length from one week to a year. These are aimed at civil servants and other public-sector workers, university students, schoolchildren and even the unemployed.



At a February 25 press conference, Mikhail Tyunin, executive director of Information Initiative, said the initial expectations of high demand for computer courses skills had been disappointed.



Surveys that his group conducted in three of Kazakstan’s provinces showed that 80 per cent of the population had not even heard of the programme, while the rest knew nothing about its goals and objectives.



While some observers blame the local government officials entrusted with finding people to attend courses, others say the offer of free training was not advertised widely enough.



Anatoly Tulyaev, deputy director of the Centre for the Introduction of New Technologies, which participated in arranging courses in Shymkent, the main city in the South Kazakstan region, said insufficient thinking went into recruiting participants ahead of time.



“The state programme was not advertised enough; there was no information drive behind the process,” he told IWPR.



“The summer-school trainers ended up having to run around and recruit people for their classes. I don’t know whether ‘dead souls’ [non-existent people] were enrolled, but some of those were clearly there only for form’s sake.



“We should think more seriously about who is going to attend these classes.”



Lyazzat Myrzalieva, a summer course teacher in a school in Shymkent, complained that few local people knew anything about the courses.



“We were only informed about the courses shortly before they started,” she said. “Even teachers at our school did not get on them because they were on holiday at the time, and they were annoyed about that.”



Those taking part in the shorter one-week courses, meanwhile, were often left unsatisfied.



“A week isn’t enough for people with no computer skills,” complained Marina Poty, a senior schoolteacher who attended one of these courses. “It takes at least a month and then you need to use a computer on a regular basis after that. I don’t have one, and I’ve already started forgetting the sketchy knowledge I acquired.”



Other participants and trainers agreed that the shortest courses needed expanding to at least ten or 12 days.



As Poty pointed out, only a minority of the population has access to a computer to practice on at home. Only 17 per cent of households in Kazakstan have a personal computer, two-thirds of them living in urban areas.



Aleksei Pankratov, a computer programmer, sees no need to hold IT courses in the first place. “Young people already have the skills, civil servants are forced to acquire them anyway, and for everyone else there are computer services at every step,” he said.



Pankratov said the best way to increase internet usage would be to provide free computer access at special centres set up in residential areas.



“What’s happened here is that an idea has been suggested and it’s been taken up without anyone developing or studying it thoroughly,” he said.



Irina Kazorina, a journalist who has been following the way the government’s IT programme has been going, agreed that its goals were unrealistic.



She said there was no point in expecting a high level of computer literacy and internet use when “in the villages especially, people are still dreaming of getting a telephone”.



According to official data, while 76 to 87 per cent of the population in various cities has a telephone, the figure is still only 38 to 44 per cent in smaller towns and villages.



“It would have been better spending the 15 billion tenge on installing more telephones,” said Kazorina. “Secondly, we should create internet cafes for people in rural areas, and thirdly, we should train experts who would really be able to reach out to people. Finally, we need to arouse interest in the programme, which requires a massive PR campaign.”



Aleksandr Kulyashov, of the Centre for the Introduction of New Technologies, said the goal of countering the prevailing ignorance about computers, remained worthwhile. “But it’s difficult to implement when people do not have the ability or incentive to buy their own computers,” he said.



“Computers must be popularised…. and to do that we need social programmes, for instance loans [to buy computers] at subsidised interest rates. If the state cares about IT skills, why can’t it help with acquiring computer equipment?”



Zinaida Savina is an IWPR contributor in Shymkent.