Rachel Thien
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN
Sunday, November 13, 2011
IT WAS a day of joy and honour for Brunei yesterday, as the country made history when it bagged an Asia-Pacific ICT Alliance (Apicta) 2011 Award after 12 years of competing with foreign talents in the ICT arena. Apicta 2011 award winner Hjh Salma Bee Abd Latiff from Crescent Sdn Bhd, was all smiles at the Brunei International Airport yesterday afternoon when she brought home her trophy for her e-learning project: "Islamic Brunei Educators", a professional diploma in Islamic banking and finance and the first of its kind in the world.
Brunei also brought home two merit awards through Chung Hwa Middle School and the Sultan Saiful Rijal Technical College, for secondary and tertiary categories. The ceremony to present the awards was held in Pattaya, Thailand from November 8-11.
For her outstanding achievement, Hjh Salma will be given a grant of $50,000 by AITI to further develop and enhance her product into a marketable commercial product, while the merit award winners will be given grants of $25,000 each.
Minister of Communications Pehin Orang Kaya Hamzah Pahlawan Dato Seri Setia Hj Abdullah Begawan Mudim Dato Paduka Hj Bakar, who was present at the airport to welcome the participants, in an interview with The Brunei Times said: "I am very very happy, and (that) all the hard work from those involved (has paid off) over the 12 years."
The minister added, after 12 years of participating, this year is the first time Brunei won numerous prizes.
"That means we must be doing very well in the software industry in Brunei and for the efforts the software developers have put in," he said.
But more importantly, Pehin Dato Hj Abdullah said, he hoped that some of the software designs could be "commercialised" and made into "commercial products".
"I understand that Hjh Salma (Apicta award winner) has been approached (for her project) to be commercialised in some countries. I hope her project will be adopted by other countries, and be a 'standard of software of choice'," he said.
Hjh Salma said winning the award has placed Brunei on the map, and was ecstatic to have won after competing with 13 other countries.
She said she was "shocked" to have won, adding this will be Brunei's first software commercial product which will be out in the market, "which is fantastic".
"I really wanted this win for Brunei and I am so happy to have won it. This is for Brunei," she said. She related that she would be heading to Nigeria next month to launch the product, and was also looking forward to commercialise it in India. The Brunei Times
i was about to complain how Bruneians were kinda lazy and this happened! Congratulations.
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