Energy, Water and Communications Minister Dr Lim Keng Yaik will ask the government to review the scrapped scheme to purchase computers using the Employees Provident Fund (EPF).

He said more Malaysians must be encouraged to be computer literate and the scheme would assist the government in achieving that goal.

Lim was speaking to reporters at a press conference after a officiating the Multimedia University International Symposium on Information and Communications Technologies 2005 in Petaling Jaya.

Acknowledging that the scheme was abused in the past, he was adamant that there must be ways around the problem.

In 2002, then-Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi announced that the scheme was scrapped, because 66 percent of those who purchased computers with their EPF money sold them off later.

Government initiative

However, Lim said that computers alone would not be enough to empower Malaysians to take advantage of e-commerce and information from the Internet, adding that connectivity and local content are equally important.

For example, local farmers are unable to use computers in rural areas to access the internet and keep abreast with the latest market prices of their goods, unlike in Japan.

"Other than infrastructure and connectivity (for broadband access to internet), there is also a lack of local content," said Lim, adding that Malaysians will respond better if services reflect more on local culture and language.

The minister said there should be some form of government initiatives to push for telcos and television companies to provide more such local content, as most companies are presently aggregating content from overseas.