NITRA urges IT firms to encourage staff work online
Nigeria Information Technology Reporters Association (NITRA), has urged companies and establishments in private and public sectors to improve on their Information and Communications Technology architecture to enable their workers to work from home.
The Chairman, NITRA, Chike Onwuegbuchi said that it had become imperative during this COVID-19 crisis period to implement the work at home as a measure to stay safe.
Onwuegbuchi noted that this was the time when most company’s technology platforms would be tested, so as to maintain a relatively good social distance as a measure of curbing the rate of infections from the virus.
He said that companies should put in place, secure messaging platforms for staff to interact while at home, and maintain strong and secured server to handle increased traffic on their network.
Onwuegbuchi urged management of companies to empower their staff so that they could be productive from home.
According to him, this is to ensure that productivity is not reduced to zero due to the scourge of COVID-19.
”To help companies operate with remote staff input, service providers can contribute their quota by alleviating the difficulties people are facing at this period by offering low cost technological services.
”Telecom service providers, including mobile network operators (MNOs) should reduce their charges for voice and data services in a bid to make communication cheaper and easier for their consumers.
”This, will make consumers rely more on telecommunication, and live streaming of messages and communications rather than physical meetings,” he said in a statement.
News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Lagos State government had put measures in place to ensure that the spread of the virus was minimised.
Some of the measures put in place included, a directive that gathering of people in a particular space be reduced to 20, this including religious gatherings, social gatherings and political gatherings.
Also, the state government had directed civil servants between Grade Level 12 and below in the state to work from home as from Monday March 23.
