Paperless e-Parliament coming
National Assembly speaker Peter Katjavivi has announced plans for the Namibian parliament to go paperless this year, with support from the parliament of Finland.
This new venture will be done in phases, he said.
“Members of parliament will be required to use the tablets given to them to do away with paper. We use a lot of paper, almost daily. And we feel the time has come to put it away and just use these tools (tablets),” he said. He added they have networked with the parliament of Finland to assist them to ensure that Namibian MPs are properly introduced to the basics of the technology. “Our ICT committee will be helping members by organising induction workshops to get them off the ground. As time goes on we will be able to inform you how well they have done,” he said.
In June 2018, Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei donated 157 Huawei MediaPad M3 Lite tablets to Namibian MPs.
Members of the National Assembly and National Council received these tablets. In September last year, MPs and parliamentary staff were rapped over the knuckles for abusing bandwidth to surf Facebook and watch YouTube videos.
They were also accused of using their official email as a socialising and chit-chat platform.
Two months before this trade minister Tjekero Tweya was found surfing a dating site on his tablet while in parliament.
Responding to this yesterday, Katjavivi said parliament is not a “high school” and members are expected to behave professionally.
He also said incidents were not reported to him directly.
“We expect parliamentarians to behave with dignity so that you do not bring parliament into disrepute, because that would be really counterproductive. Surfing dating websites is not part of the duty of parliamentarians,” he said.
JEMIMA BEUKES
This new venture will be done in phases, he said.
“Members of parliament will be required to use the tablets given to them to do away with paper. We use a lot of paper, almost daily. And we feel the time has come to put it away and just use these tools (tablets),” he said. He added they have networked with the parliament of Finland to assist them to ensure that Namibian MPs are properly introduced to the basics of the technology. “Our ICT committee will be helping members by organising induction workshops to get them off the ground. As time goes on we will be able to inform you how well they have done,” he said.
In June 2018, Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei donated 157 Huawei MediaPad M3 Lite tablets to Namibian MPs.
Members of the National Assembly and National Council received these tablets. In September last year, MPs and parliamentary staff were rapped over the knuckles for abusing bandwidth to surf Facebook and watch YouTube videos.
They were also accused of using their official email as a socialising and chit-chat platform.
Two months before this trade minister Tjekero Tweya was found surfing a dating site on his tablet while in parliament.
Responding to this yesterday, Katjavivi said parliament is not a “high school” and members are expected to behave professionally.
He also said incidents were not reported to him directly.
“We expect parliamentarians to behave with dignity so that you do not bring parliament into disrepute, because that would be really counterproductive. Surfing dating websites is not part of the duty of parliamentarians,” he said.
JEMIMA BEUKES
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