Connecting old people to the internet.

[tom]

A new three-year programme to connect the elderly to the Internet will start in January 2010.

During a ministerial session on Sunday, Acting minister for information announced that computers with internet connections will be setup in 100 locations for the elderly.

A total of 8 training facilities, 4 are now in place another 4 to be ready by Oct. 2010 to help train the elderly to surf the net.

The training centres will be located in community centres, Senior Citizen Connect corner as well as clan and society buildings.

Why train the elderly ? The reason is  to get  the elderly people out from their house into a community, make friends and look after one another rather than stay at home." 

  In fact if not mistaken, the PCF, CDCC, grassroots and senior citizen organisations had been doing this some 10 to 15 years ago. What the able elderly need is a job with a monthly income to keep them going first. Once financially independent, automatically they would know what to do next. 

[tom]

Singapore, our tiny red dot is known as the most wired nation in the world.

This exercise is probably to tell the whole world that we may be closed to perfect in training our people from toddlers ( who crawls )to grandparents ( with walking aids ) in the use of information technology (IT ).

Propaganda ? maybe, maybe not.

People who are doing international surveys may only be too happy to pick it up and do the reporting. 

Maybe training, retraining and equip them with a job should be the first priority.