Agriculture Dept to Emphasise on ICT to Enhance the Primary Sector in Vanuatu

"The Ministry of Agriculture to Push on ICT to Be More Effective": DG Aru

by Jean-Baptiste CALO

The Director General for the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Howard Aru emphasised that the ministry has no other option but to make sure that human resource of all the departments under the ministry and especially the field workers will be be trained in using ICT tools to enhance the work done by the sectors of agriculture, forestry, fisheries and bio-security in Vanuatu.

Director General For Agriculture, Fisheries, Livestock, Forestry
and Bio-security

DG Aru made this remark on Friday October 17th 2014 in his closing speech of the 5 days training workshop on web 2.0 and online social media that was attended by 20 participants mostly from government the agriculture department, and other government line agencies including NGO representatives.

Mr Aru said that him and the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry were made aware of the crucial importance of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in the development of Agriculture and the overall primary sector today in the world.

"Me and the Minister David Tosul just arrived from the Caribbean Week of Agriculture recently organised in Paramaribo, Suriname in South America. The main point that was raised during that international agriculture event was the importance and necessity of the use of ICT and Social Media in the development of Agriculture, Forestry and Forestry. The Caribbean and African are well off in terms of the use of ICT in the primary sector, and they all testified about the goodness and necessity of the use of ICT tools in terms of enhancing the productivity and networking from the authorities to the farmers below and also in terms of the marketing of the products", Mr Aru said.

He went on saying that "Vanuatu has no other options but to seriously embark into this ICT revolution. The Ministry has taken a firm stand to make sure that all the staffs from the ministry down to the field workers will all be trained in using ICT tools. We will run a series of web 2.0 training with the staff of all the departments under our control, namely the departments of Agriculture, forestry, fisheries, livestock and bio-security".