It deals with some measures ICTA (Information Communication Technology Authority) wishes to introduce or see implemented. While some are laudable, such as promotion of ICT as education tools and enhancing performance of communication systems, the last part of the article ticks off my Paranoia Alarm.

The shot of the scary paragraph, with highlighted portions can be seen below.

Well, what do I see? ICTA wants to implement Internet filtering in Mauritius.

I remember Ex-President, Mr. Cassam Uteem’s wish to see some pages of Facebook blocked due to some offensive content. There have also been past instances of Facebook being blocked in Mauritius, for example, due to the usurpation of our PM’s identity to create a profile. These cases may have warranted a blocking of the incriminating pages, but I doubt censorship was the only possible solution.

Now imagine if our local politicians or authorities have the power to block sites at a whim. Tomorrow, Mr. X doesn’t like a parody video of his speech on Youtube, and the site is blocked? No thanks!

Something strikes me as funny in this article: “the idea is not to implement censorship”. Can somebody enlighten me about the difference between “filtering” and “censorship”? I thought that content that was filtered out was censored. Am I wrong?

Giving censorship powers to a Government is too much in my opinion. The Internet should be a free-flow of information, and not to be controlled by anybody. I agree that there are some content that deserve censorship, but I believe it’s best left to its users to know what should be accessed and what should not. Such situations exist in real-life too. There are some places in cities where it is dangerous to go. However, I do not see any barriers erected to prevent people, especially children from going there. So why should this apply to the Internet?

If parents do not want their kids accessing unauthorized contents, well, they can be educated into how to implement filtration software on their machines locally. Or make the government-filtering opt-in. So people who want to see the Internet filtered can install software locally to do the job, with the use of a Government-managed database. Others can continue using the Internet as they see fit, taking their responsibilities if ever they are caught doing nasty stuff.

On a side note, we see the Internet from the social and crowd aspect nowadays. You have social networking, social bookmarking, social music discovery, social-tea-making, social-what-not. Why not social filtering? I have no idea how this would work, but hey, we do democratic voting to elect out leaders, we could do some democratic voting on what we want off the Internet too right?

I leave you to the views and your comments…

This article comes from GeekScribes

Internet Filtering Coming To Mauritius Soon?

I’ll start at the very beginning, and illustrate some points as to how the crisis was mismanaged, and what possible solutions existed if there was a possible solution to begin with. Let’s start where it all began:

1. No Disease Warning System in Mauritius

At first, when the first case was reported, people didn’t really know if there was AH1N1 in Mauritius or not. All we heard was “suspicious case” and nothing about a confirmation. People just casually brushed off the issue, saying “Bah! One case in a million. Probably a tourist somewhere in a hotel. I shouldn’t be worried”, and continued their lives. No communique was issued about any warnings, or precautions to take. A simple “Possible Swine Flu case in Mauritius. Take appropriate precautions.” would be enough. But wait? What is “appropriate precautions”? We don’t have any warning system here. After Chikungunya, we should have one already, but no, we have no warning system for diseases! If we had one, the communique could have said “Possible Swine Flu case in Mauritius. Take Level 1 Precautions” and it’d be a lot clearer, like “Class 1 in Mauritius”!

2. People flocking to hospitals

As soon as the first few deaths were reported, people flocked en mass to hospitals to get themselves diagnosed. At that time, people were not very well informed about how the disease spread. If you have ever been to a hospital in Mauritius, you know how they function: you sit in the Casualty/Waiting Room until you get your turn to see a GP and move on to a specialist if needs be. You should also know that the estimated waiting time is usually more than 1 hr in the best of cases.

People, infected with Swine Flu and Seasonan Flu sat together in a waiting room, for long durations and packed close together. Can you tell me of a better way to spread a disease fast? The disease can move around an estimated 2 meters, and stay active for around 6 hours outside a host. (That’s what the Govt. said.) Now imagine the number of people that could have caught the disease. I know, a flu-reserved area was setup at the hospitals, but it didn’t come immediately, did it?

What could have been done? Virtually nothing. As soon as people felt they had flu, they panicked and ran to hospitals. I understand them, it’s difficult to distinguish between AH1N1 and the seasonal flu. A possible solution would be to use smaller, but more numerous waiting rooms, so the risk of contaminating a big crowd is minimized, but I don’t know if it’d have worked.

3. Not monitoring the stock of Tamiflu (or its alternatives)

I thought it was the job of the Ministry of Health to keep an eye on our stocks of medicines. After a while, what do we hear? The Tamiflu was expired! So for this whole time, people were consuming expired stuff. As a counter-argument, the Min. of Health contacted the Tamiflu agency or something and got the information that the pills were still good for two years after expiration. I agree, it may still be good, but is it still as effective? It may be safe for consumption, but I guess its effectiveness decreases with time. Else, it wouldn’t need an expiration date, would it?

What should have been done is monitoring of the stocks! Come’on! We got a worldwide Swine Flu outbreak, and nobody thought of checking our Tamiflu, our sole line of defense, to see if it’s still good?

Also, there is this rumor that Tamiflu is being reserved for tourists and other folks, and also, that the stock of Tamiflu is running out faster than expected. So unlike UK, where Tamiflu is given over phone.

4. Information and Misinformation

I remember the first announces that said: “Masks are not effective. No need to wear them. They may even be more dangerous for you”. Then recently, “Wear masks if possible”. What the hell? What should I do? Wear them or don’t wear them? Also, let’s consider France, since our Minister of Education, Hon. Bunwaree, considered France when closing down schools (more on that below). France recently made an order of more than $35 million for  protective masks. If those were not effective, would France have ordered those? This raises the existing $112 million investment in masks.  UK bought 60 million masks. I ask you, if those masks were not useful, why would those big guys import tons of them? France also ordered 94 million doses of vaccine plus 28 million doses as reserve. That’s what I call preparation! Sources: 1, 2, 3.

Till now, I haven’t seen a single person wearing a mask in Mauritius and at the University of Mauritius. I may have missed some of course. My point is that the majority were not mask-protected.

5. Information Hiding and Overflow

I can agree that hiding information from the general public can prevent mass panic. I’ll let you decide if this information should be hidden or not: The number of confirmed deaths due to AH1N1. I ask you: do you know how many people died? 5? 6? 7? I don’t know. I couldn’t keep up with the flow of information. We hear about a “possible death” but then, nothing about whether it was confirmed or not. In my opinion, letting people know how many deaths there are serves to boost up their awareness and their will to protect themselves. I got nothing more to say about this, except that I think people deserve to know what’s actually happening about a disease.

I’ll dump another issue here: not enough campaigning early during the crisis. People knew that some kind of flu was there, that it was possibly fatal for people with weak immune systems or have a special condition: pregnancy, heart diseases or other chronic diseases. But we were not told, until somewhat late, what we should do. The “wash hands often, avoid handshakes, avoid kisses, use hankies” etc came too late! If there had been a warning system, this issue would not have arisen.

6. Yet more backtracking

On Tuesday 18th Aug 2009, we got a press conference from our Prime Minister, Min. of Education and Min. of Health, saying that schools will not be closed yet because the situation seems to be under control, and not alarming enough yet. Or in simple terms “wait and see”.

Just two days later, new press conference by I don’t know who: “Schools will be closed for 10 days, and be re-opened on the 31st Aug.” Huh? I thought that the situation was under control! What just happened? Apparently, absenteeism climbed to 50% or more in schools. Parents didn’t want their kids to go to schools, ill or not. The risk was too great, specially considering that the 6 or so deaths included children.

But why the delay? Why the backtracking only 2 days after? I’ll let you conclude.

I say that, as soon as Swine Flu was confirmed among students, schools should have been closed. I don’t care which schools the cases were from, schools should have been shut down.  Hon. Bunwaree quoted the French example: 3 cases before the school closes down. But sir! In France, they don’t have private tuition where students are packed in tiny rooms for hours on! If some dude at a school in Rose Hill contracted Swine Flu, and comes to tuition in Port Louis, you just got a case of disease migration. The dude from RH just contaminated the dudes of PL, who’d contaminate the dudes of elsewhere! That’s why schools should have closed as soon as AH1N1 was confirmed among students. Same applies for tuition. Teachers should have halted their after-hours classes until the 31st. But I guess, some of them won’t comply. $$ before health for them. If you are a responsible parent, you know what you must do: keep your kids at home, and go kick the rear of that teacher for irresponsibility.

By the way, no one seemed to have considered University of Mauritius, and its packed lecture theaters, labs and every other nameable place. Aren’t those good for swine flu spreading? Go figure.

7. Schools!

This is a whole topic in itself! Too bad it comes 7th in my trying-to-be chronological list. Let’s see the problem with schools. Firstly, they took a hell of a lot of time to close down. Students were not wearing masks until very late. Even then, it was only those with possible flu symptoms that were given masks, and not everybody. I guess there weren’t enough masks. Proper sanitation is non-existent most of the time. Tell me, when there is no AH1N1 in Mauritius, do you think liquid soap is available to students in primary schools and colleges? No! For a whole long while, students were playing around, possibly contaminating each other.

Before closing down schools, our brains in the country thought of disinfecting the schools. But earlier they told everybody that the disease can only last 6 hours outside a host. Logically, when the students head home after school, and the school re-opens the next day at 8am something, I believe it makes more than 6 hours right? Do we need disinfectant then? Who knows… but the Ministries concerned think so, despite what they said themselves.

Finally the schools closed for 10 days! But wait, is it really 10 days? Who the hell came up with that figure? Because, you Mr. or Ma’am, don’t know your maths! 10 days? You included the Ganesh Chaturti public holiday,  and the 2 weekends! I never knew schools were opened on public holidays and weekends. In fact, schools will be closed for just 5 days:  21, 25, 26, 27, 28 of August! Count yourself. May I then know, why everybody keeps saying “Schools will close for 10 days” when in fact, students will only miss 5 days of class?

For those 5 days, the amount of drama being done, I can only say wow! Firstly, parents will need to go fetch their students’ work from their schools. Secondly, educational shows will be done on TV and Radios. Thirdly, there will be catch up classes. Seriously?? Do we really need all that? What happens when schools close down for 5-6 days due to cyclones in the 3rd trimester? I know the 3rd trimester is very important, but it doesn’t require so much show! Parents don’t go fetch their kids’ work during cyclones! So why now? It’s just 5 days, parents could just tell the students to do their work, or read and plan the coming chapters, and do their work. After school resumes, teachers could be handed the work for correction and clarifications if needs be. It’s that simple: home-schooling for 5 days! Not too tough, is it?

A comical thing I noted: parents have to go to the schools to get their kids’ works. Some of them had to sit down and copy the work off the board. Schools were closed so that students do not come in close proximity to each other. But when the parents are sitting down and copying work, the problem is not resolved. If one parent has the AH1N1 flu, s/he could very well contaminate other people in the classroom or schools, and finally bring the disease home and contaminate their family. Min. of Edu. has brilliant ideas I tell you.

8. The Media

I tend to like the frankness and openness of the private medias in Mauritius. The private radios do a fantastic job in delivering us information and quality content. But here, I’m pointing a blaming finger at them: people you may have exaggerated the danger of the flu crisis. I will agree that they did what they could to help and inform, but the emphasis with which they commented on the deaths and the flu as a whole served to cause quite some panic among the population. Everyday people were listening in to know how many new cases and new deaths were reported, and this fueled the frenzy. They did their job at informing people what was happening and what to do, but maybe with too much insistence. For the past week, whenever I switched on to a private radio, all I heard was swine flu stuff: debates, the news, the general public commenting on swine flu, the ministries’ inaction and what should have been done. Swine flu is an important issue, but it was over-exploited in a way. After all, swine flu is supposedly no more dangerous than seasonal flu. Or so “they” say. Nevertheless cheers to the private radios, you did a good job at keeping informed throughout the crisis.

That is where we have reached till now in the crisis. Schools will be closed for another 4 days, there will be lot of talking about classes being missed or whatnot. The progression of the disease will be observed closely, and we’ll see what happens. I end here, awaiting for new information to share with you readers. Let’s see how the mismanagement goes on.

Hope you don’t get the AH1N1 flu. Comments, suggestions and criticism awaited. Comment box is below.

This article comes from GeekScribes

Swine Flu in Mauritius: A Tale of Mismanagement

What’s the summer time concept basically? In Mauritius, we’ll be moving our clocks forward by one hour. That is, if it’s actually 6 a.m in the morning, our clocks will be showing 7 a.m. This means that people waking up at 6 a.m (without summer time) will wake up 1 hour earlier. You go to work 1 hour earlier, and return 1 hour earlier. This also means (in theory) that you will get to use daylight for 1 more hour per day instead of using electricity.

(DST will apply from 26th October to 29th March at midnight for both).

But according to me, it’s not that simple. Let’s see the case against, since the Government and others are already hammering us all with the case for.

1) How many countries use DST (Daylight Saving Time = Summer Time) in the southern hemisphere?

I say, not loads. And I will back it with a map, which I got from here.

From what you see in the map, loads of Northern hemisphere (NH) countries use DST (yellow), while only very few Southern hemisphere (SH) countries use it (green). Grey areas don’t use DST. There’s a good reason for it. Countries like the UK get sunlight till around 20-21h when it’s totally dark here. So if the people in NH get 1 hour to use daylight, it does make savings. Here, it’s totally dark by 18h30.

2) Can’t see a thing in the morning!

This leads to my second point. We return home 1 hour early. This means that people are able to do more things in daylight, and not switch on the lights. I agree. That’s one hour saved. Now let’s consider next morning. Instead of waking up at 6 a.m, you will wake up at 5 a.m. There is hardly any light so early in the morning. It’s still too dark. What do you do then? Switch on the lights of course! Hell, even the street lights are still on at 5 am!

Finally, the result is: you saved one hour the previous day in the evening, and you use the saved one hour the next day, in the morning. Where’s the savings? I see no saving!

3) People wake up waaaayyy too early

I wake up at 6 a.m. I need to leave my house at 7 a.m to get to uni at 8 a.m since courses start at 8.30 am. Remember the huge traffic jams in Mauritius? Now with DST: I need to get up at 5 a.m (the clock shows it’s 6 a.m), leave the house at 6 a.m, and get to uni at 7 a.m (the clock shows 8 a.m) and courses start at… 7.30 am (clock shows 8.30 a.m)! I HATE WAKING UP EARLY! >.<

Now, that’s for me. But remember that there are people that get up even earlier? I’ve got a friend. He needs to leave home at 6 a.m even with no DST. Now the poor guy needs to leave at 5 a.m and get up at 4 a.m! (Those are real day times. The clocks would show: get-up: 5 a.m and leave at 6 a.m).

That’s still ok. Let’s consider the people who work in fields and agriculture. They work at 4 a.m (real time) usually. Now with DST they need to go to work at 3 a.m (real time, clock shows: 4 a.m)?

What about the bus driver? The first bus starts at 4 a.m (real time). Now it will go at 3 a.m (real time)? The guy needs to wake up at what, 1.30 a.m??

You think this is normal?

The Government says: But hey, you will go to sleep one hour earlier too! So it amounts to the same duration of sleep. I say no! Your body tends to keep a rhythm. You’ve been waking up and sleeping at a defined time since your childhood. It’s not easy to change that rhythm! I bet most of you will just wake up one hour earlier, and sleep at the same time you used to. This means, one hour of sleep lost. This also means that we’ll be walking zombies due to tiredness.

EDIT: Today, DST was applied. Now, it’s 19h45. It’s still relatively bright outside. Like dusk has just ended. Street lights starting to get on. The one hour that people gained will probably be used to do more activities. That’s one hour of activities more. Thus, I guess people’s normal routines will shift by one hour. Dinner prepared one hour later. You watch TV one hour later. And sleep one hour later than usual.

How many times do you hear this: “Enkor faire clair la, nu kaw faire xyz”? Then this “xyz” activity will last till it’s still bright. Till 19h15-19h30. Then you stop, and start your normal activities (which would start at 18h30 without DST). You are already one hour late. See what I mean?

If my reasoning holds, people will be losing one hour of sleep when they go to sleep. It’d be too bright just to go to bed early. People’s body clock are regulated by light.

4) The last time, DST didn’t hold

The last time the government decided to implement DST, it didn’t last very long. My dad tells me there were widespread protests and that people were very tired. I’ll trust him on that one since I was not born yet! If an idea didn’t work in the past, why do they want to re-implement it? I can’t understand that!

5) No research/survey conducted

Joël de Rosnay, the PM’s “Special Adviser” mentioned it on the radios the other day. There was no real scientific research and surveys conducted about implementation of DST in Mauritius. There was no research to gauge the health and social impacts on Mauritians. I doubt any research was even conducted to see if DST would allow energy savings. So, am I to assume the Government just decided to implement DST just because they liked it? Joël de Rosnay is a scientist, he knows what he’s talking about.

Today itself, I heard a Sociologist talking on the Radio Plus. I didn’t catch his name. He mentioned something interesting. When people come home early, they will have dinner earlier, and everything earlier. But this does not mean they’ll go to bed earlier! He mentioned that people will tend to go out more, since they have more time. This in turn will cause an increase in oil/gas consumption by vehicles, mentioning that there are no savings. He’s right about not sleeping early. People are not automatons after all!

This statement just strengthened my view that no scientific research was conducted to decide if DST is required in Mauritius or not.

6) Because other people say DST is pointless

I’m adding this point because I just found a site, Afrol, that usually discusses African news. I’ll quote some parts for you:

The government of Mauritius has decided that the island nation will introduce Summer (Daylight saving) Time, starting in October this year. Mauritius will be the first sub-Saharan African nation to do so, connecting the island more closely to tourist and business markets in Europe. The Mauritian cabinet, in the context of promoting Mauritius as “Une Île Durable”, has agreed to the introduction into the national parliament of the Time Bill, which provides for the introduction of summer time in Mauritius.

According to government, the summer time initiative is expected to “produce gains to the country, reduce global carbon emissions, generate substantial savings in terms of energy production and consumption, and at the same time, reduce the electricity peak demand in the evening by some 15 MW.”

The use of Daylight saving time (DST) is mostly confined to countries located at high latitudes, including all Europe except Iceland and most of North America. In the southern hemisphere, DST is only used in southern South America (notably Chile and Argentina), New Zealand and some parts of Australia.

In Africa, the use of DST is seldom and in most cases counterproductive, as the continent’s location close to the equator produces only very small differences in daylight in winter and summer.

However, Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt follow European summer time, while DST earlier was tried out in countries such as South Africa, Madagascar, Botswana, Algeria, Libya, Sudan and Ghana. These experiments however did not last long and no sub-Saharan country now uses DST.

The use of summer time has been controversial in many countries. For business and leisure, the longer time-span of daylight during summer is seen as an advantage, as it may turn out for Mauritius’ large tourism industry. But DST causes problems for the farming sector and other occupations tied to the sun. Claims that DST reduces electricity consume [sic], often an important goal for governments introducing the system, mostly have proven unrealistic.

Source: Afrol

Go see the source for yourself! Oh by the way, the 15MW saved? It’s approximately equal to the power of 15-20 wind turbines! Can you call that savings? And large tourism industry? In a global recession? Let’s see how long the “large” holds.

After all this, what’s the point of implementing DST? The Call Centres / BPOs don’t like it, the people of religion, the students – I bet – will simply hate it, as will the population after they feel the effect of tiredness. So why does the Government persist? Is there a hidden agenda somewhere? Do they want to seem more developed by adopting something Europeans or Americans do? I guess they really want to lose the upcoming elections!

The CEB did mention one thing: They want the electricity consumption peak to shift. I don’t see how DST affects the peak usage. It’ll just shift to 1 hour later.

Till now, nobody could convince me about the benefits of DST for Mauritius. So for now, I’m still against it.

( I really don’t want to go to courses at 7 a.m, with possibly one hour of sleep less each day! )

Anyways, some people are really taking this positively. Let’s wait and see. Either I am wrong and everybody will be fine, or I’ll be seeing a hoard of walking sleepers at UoM very soon. I’ll keep you posted in any case.

Let’s here your comments about DST. If you have written any articles about it, post it in the comments!

P.s: Orange has some instructions to automatically adjust the time of your computers. See their site: Windows XP and Windows Vista. According to some reports, Linux should automatically adjust if you enable the correct settings. See your distribution’s manual for that.

This article comes from GeekScribes

Summer time in Mauritius: Pointless?

As a fellow Mauritian, it is my duty to congratulate the Mauritian Magician (or the Creole Crusher, or The Dark Horse, …). He is a man of many nicknames, but with an undeniably powerful punch. Powerful enough to bring Mauritius it’s FIRST Olympic medal.

Bronze it is, but a medal is a medal. It’s value is no less. And this man got it! You have shown the entire world that Mauritius exists on the world map, no matter how small our island is.

The apparent hit below the belt, the controversial judge decision has prevented you from bringing us the Silver medal, but we know you would have won anyways. We know it. The commentators know it. For us, you won! It’s a good start. A very good start indeed!

So CONGRATULATIONS to

BRUNO JULIE!

This article comes from GeekScribes

Congrats Bruno Julie!

So, Mr. Speaker Sir, I will now move on to dissecting the speech, and putting up the relevant sections, which according to me, are most relevant to the title. Of course, if you found anything worthy of being added or something that interests you in the speech, you can still post it via comments and I’ll add it here. Here goes:

80. Therefore, Mr Speaker, Sir, we are starting today a comprehensive and effective action plan to increase enrolment ratio at tertiary level. We will begin by enabling all students who are qualified and willing to pursue further studies to secure access to tertiary education. These short term actions will be accompanied by a medium term strategy to significantly increase the share of each cohort of primary students going to HSC and to tertiary education so as to double the enrollment ratio by 2015. And we will give all the support required to students who want to pursue tertiary studies but cannot afford it.

This is a particularly good measure to encourage people to move on to Tertiary education, and will be helped in terms of funding and similar. The problem is, I doubt the current institutions will be able to double their intake. I cannot see University of Mauritius doubling its capacity in a mere 7 years, unless the campus is drastically increased in size. This will imply heavy investment there, to enhance the existing infrastructure, and provide some new facilities. A good example would be to put a bus-station near UoM to remove the massive traffic chaos there is every morning in front of the Octave Wiehe Auditorium and to cater for the increase in student population. The tiny bus-stop existing now cannot cater for students in times of heavy rain. Also, if they could improve the standards, and provide up-to-date equipment, it would be paradise!

84. To meet the higher demand that this measure should generate, the University of Mauritius and University of Technology Mauritius will increase their intake in the next academic year so that all students who qualify for university studies can be admitted.

Aww! Bad move! BAD move! I really think that UoM is already too packed. Or maybe not, but as I said above, the existing infrastructure can hardly cope with the increased number of students. An example? I still remember white-boards being used with a class of 100+ students. You can’t see anything on that board, specially when you are at the back of the class. If they want to increase the number of students, they got to provide more facilities. Or heck, provide a second campus! UoM2! In peak time, the smallish cafeteria is too full. Common room usually doesn’t have enough space (and furniture) for students. Now, if you increase it even further? I think we’ll have flexi-time courses at Uni!

86. In addition, to promote flexible learning and accommodate those who are unable to follow a normal curriculum during the day, our two Universities are developing proposals for expanding intake in evening courses. The University of Technology Mauritius will introduce the concept of flexi-learning, where there is no time limit for completing a course. This will give students more flexibility in the allocation of their time between studies and work or other priorities.

That’s a good idea! If only it was implemented for all courses! And if only UoM could remove that “compulsory attendance” thing, and let you choose your own learning scheme. What if I want to stay at home, download notes and study by myself, and choose only to attend the lectures I really want? That would be great. Ok, maybe not totally remove “compulsory attendance”, but maybe bring it down from ~80% to ~40%? Please? I still don’t understand why e-courses are still not being offered? A virtual class-room would not be bad, but I can imagine it lagging under our current Internet speeds. Maybe for later.

87. Our tertiary education institutions and the private sector will work together to offer sandwich courses. These courses combine theory and practice, class room lectures and work experience. They will give our students the best start possible into the world of work and create that crucial bridge between university and industry.This programme will also make tertiary education more affordable.

Nice to see theory and practice being combined more, though saying it and doing it are two different things. I think UoM already has something name “Work-based learning”. Don’t have much info about it yet, but it is good to have some field experience.

89. The Ministry of Education, in collaboration with other Government Departments, the IVTB, the Empowerment Programme and NGOs, will develop a Second Chance Programme by January 2009 for all young people under 21 who are not in full time education or full time employment. This programme aims to provide basic numeracy and language skills to those who have dropped out of school and orient these young people to a vocational programme. The programme will include a strong emphasis on life training skills and provide psychological and social back up.The Human Resource Development, Knowledge and Arts Fund will provide the necessary financing.

Again a good move to help students who do not have necessary qualifications to join tertiary education institution. At least it will help reduce employment and increase overall education level.

94. To this end, the Ministry of Education will formulate a strategy to implement the development of distance education in Mauritius.

Oh? I was just thinking about it in point #86, and here it is! Let’s see what can come out of this.

95. The cost of laptops and internet access for these students will be covered by the Government loan guarantee scheme. In addition, needy students will be provided a scholarship to buy a laptop and pay for the costs of internet access for the duration of their distance learning studies.

Awww! Only for needy students! Come’on most students in Mauritius can’t afford a laptop yet. The price of a decent machine is still quite high. Oh well, at least SOME students are going to be benefiting from this. They could consider importing those mini-laptops that cost around $500. Not much on performance, but ideal for school in my opinion.

124. We must also improve connectivity on the digital highway. Currently only about 70 percent of the island has access to high speed internet at 128 kbs compared to at least 512 kbs in Europe and even higher speeds in Asia. Our aim is to provide almost everyone with 512 kbs within the next few years. To achieve this, we are working with our partners in the Indian Ocean Commission and COMESA to develop an inter-island high speed cable connection that would link up to other cable projects between Africa and Asia. In addition Mauritius Telecom will purchase additional capacity on SAFE and develop the local backbone at a cost of around Rs 2 billion over the next few years.

Before I comment, I wish to point out that a new unit of data transmission speed has been developed for the budget! It’s the *drum roll* kbs! Mind you, it’s not just a typing mistake! They really put kbs in the speech! I head of Kbps or even Kb/s, but kbs is totally new to me!

I love the play on words. 70% of the island has access to 128 kbs (lol) does not mean that 70% already got it. It mean they can have it, but it may not mean they actually have that connection! Also, note the “next few years”. If 70% of Mauritius will get 512 kbs (lol!!) in the next few years, I wonder what Japan will be getting. 512Mbps? Really, it’s just too long! The Government should start motioning for higher speed connections be offered to users! And at an affordable price!

The part about additional capacity on SAFE and about increasing the capacity of the local backbone is specially interesting. I wonder if it will actually happen though. For now, I can only see price cuts on the horizon, and no 8Mbps in sight yet. *sigh* I have mixed feelings about that inter-island cable network. I don’t really know if it will help enhance Internet performance in Mauritius, unless we get access to their share of the SAFE cable too.

146. … we are making today the decision to adopt Summer Time in Mauritius and move the clock forward one hour from 1st November 2008 to 31st March 2009.

Till now, the people I talked to have mixed reactions to this. Some of them say it’s quite a good move. Others say it will cause people to work around 2 hours more per day, increasing stress and tiredness levels. Apparently, this measure was implemented in the eighties, but it failed and was removed. Now the Government is coming with it again as a pilot project, which will start November 2008. Let’s see what it brings.

147. Government will come up with an energy efficiency bill to set standards on the use of energy and on the tools and equipments through which energy is consumed.

Not much to say here. I’m pro efficient energy use. So for me, it’s great! The selling of economic light bulbs at cheap prices is welcomed.

156. Iam also reducing by half the taxes on hybrid vehicles. Excise duties, road tax and registration fees will all be halved for such vehicles starting on 1st July 2008. I am also eliminating customs duty on all tyres with energy saving and emission reducing certification.

Again, same comment as above. It’s a good move when it comes to saving fuel and energy. I do not understand the last part though. Are there tyres with “energy saving” and “emission reducing certification”? Do tyres emit something? Dunno.

157. We are launching a Bus Modernization Programme which will enable all bus operators to renew their fleet, at no extra cost, with new generation buses which are:
(i) environmentally friendly with reduced emissions;
(ii) more comfortable; and
(iii) with low floors to speed and facilitate boarding, especially for the elderly and handicapped.

I think this measure will be appreciated by everybody, not just students and geeks. But anyways, considering that most students travel by bus, this measure is most welcomed. Probably, we will stop getting big puffs of dark smoke in our faces from old buses now.

199. The actions of the Foundation will include:
(i) Donation of refurbished PCs pre-installed with Microsoft free licences to 20,000 poor families within the next 5 years;
(ii) Donation to NGOs of 10,000 PCs refurbished with Microsoft licences to set up IT classes for the poor in conjunction with the Empowerment Programme
(iii) Operation of an NGO IT Academy with the help of Microsoft, where free classes in IT shall be delivered specifically to IT teachers willing to acquire more precise knowledge and also to NGO’s staffs and trainers.

This is one of my favourite measures in this budget! Refurbished PCs at a low price will greatly increase IT penetration in the country. But I do not understand the Microsoft licenses choice. Why not Linux or some other open-source OS and software? This would effectively save millions since licenses need not be bought. It would also increase the Linux and OSS (Open-Source Software) awareness in Mauritius. The first point says Microsoft free licenses. This is ambiguous. Is it Microsoft-free or Microsoft freebies? I think I can see Microsoft’s sponsorship here, so if the licenses are not going to cost anything, then whatever!

201. For the population at large, we are continuing to bring down the price of telecommunications. Since 2005, the cost has fallen as follows:
(i) for international bandwidth by 52 per cent for 2 Megabite per second
(ii) for ADSL internet access at 128 kbs by around 24 percent;
(iii) for mobile calls to fixed lines by 20 percent;
(iv) for international calls from fixed line telephones by 84.8 percent.

By far my favorite point! I mentioned this above. Price cuts in sight, but no speed increase anywhere on the horizon! 52% increase in… 2 Megabite?? Megabite? LOL! Another mistake! And coupled with the kbs mistake! This is really fun! The people writing the budget speech should really check up their units and what they write. Imagine some international folks reading the budget speech. Serious lols in sight! Megabite! Just don’t go interpreting that in French!

52% decrease for 2 Megabit per second? I never heard of that one! I believe 2 Mbps is still priced at Rs.10,000/month (US$ 334/month), which is well above the average Mauritian family’s budget. Specially considering that 8Mbps is available abroad for Rs.1200, from Orange! The other price cuts mentioned could be seen easily though, specially the mobile fees that have been steadily decreasing.

If I could request anything for the next budget, I’d request that we get higher-speed Internet at an affordable price. 128Kbps and 512Kbps are really outdated nowadays in the Web 2.0 age, with sites like Youtube, high-definition content and online gaming demanding more and more bandwidth. The Internet talks in Megabit nowadays!

202. The DBM computer loan scheme will be extended to Net PCs being launched by Mauritius Telecom to offer inexpensive computers costing Rs 7,000. The Net PC will be connected to a central server and, except for absence of a hard disk, will have the same capability as a standard PC. At the same time, the Net PC will be connected to the internet via the server. To finance the Net PC, the DBM will provide concessionary loans over 5 years for the full cost of the equipment and three year’s worth of internet access.

Personally, I have doubts about the performance of the NetPC. I haven’t tested it personally, but making a system like that work on anything less than a Megabit connection is going to bring some serious lags. Moreover, the budget speech mentions “will have the same capability as a standard PC”. I doubt this statement too. The time it will take for things to go between servers and clients on a slow and crammed network will be a major factor in performance.

Nevertheless, it might interest some people. I think NetPC costs a monthly fee. In the long run, it might be better to just purchase your own low-cost machine. That’s what I would do, but people got their own opinions… so, they do what they want. A low-cost computer can be built for under Rs.20,000 if you know how to hunt for parts, and know what to buy.

203. The Ministry of Education will also work with Mauritius Telecom to develop hotspots for educational institutions and public places. In addition, they will jointly expand the school IT programme.

Hot spots? As in WiFi hotspots? If these are free, it will be absolutely great! But Mauritius Telecom? I doubt anything free can come out of this company.

Well, that’s it for my analysis of the parts of the budget that interested me, and possibly you too. Overall, it was an OK budget, with some good points and some bad points. Nothing highly new and creative, a lot of emphasis on poor and needy people, specially measures to combat poverty. Interestingly, there are some new issues addressed, like efficient energy use, and developing the IT sector and tertiary education. Less emphasis were placed on attention-hogging sectors, giving way to new issues. Of course, there was lots of emphasis on “how my Government did against your Government” talks, which was to be expected!

I’ll stop here. Post your budget reactions and post feedbacks as comments. Thanks for reading!

This article comes from GeekScribes

Budget 2008-2009: Points of Interest