The Shillong Technology Park, which is one of the 300 ambitious projects of the Meghalaya government, will provide golden opportunities to the IT professionals of the state.

Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma said on February 2, 2022,  while inaugurating the Shillong Technology Park project in presence of Information Technology and Communication Minister Hamletson Dohling and PHE Minister Renikton Lyngdoh.

"The Shillong Technological Park, which is one of the 300 ambitious projects of the state government, will be inaugurated in 2022 as part of Meghalaya’s Golden Jubilee year," the CM added.

"Apart from IT professionals of Meghalaya, the Shillong Technological Park will provide golden opportunities for IT professionals of Meghalaya from across the world to contribute back to their home state," the CM reiterated.

"I am sure many youngsters working outside Meghalaya would like to return back and work near their homes. I have already announced a vision that in the next 10 years, Meghalaya should be among the top 10 States of India. The success of this Tech Park will propel the realization of this vision," he added.

Stating that technology is only meaningful when it enhances humanness and benefits society, he said, "Each of us needs to act as a fully aware digital citizen, responsible co-creators and visionary leaders of the digital world."

"Meghalaya has 70% population below the age of 35 years. The state has tremendous potential in the IT sector," he added.

"We have a great demographic dividend to harness the young people in the technology sector. Making the youth future-ready at the mass level is the prime focus of the government," he said.

On job creation, Sangma said, "Although the first phase building of the Technology Park is going to create employment for more than 1500 people directly, however, it is estimated that it will generate three times as many jobs indirectly. Shillong Technology Park to bring convergence of different arrays of technology to a single platform, viz. combination of voice, video, data on a single network."

The CM further informed that the Tech Park will support incubation centres in collaboration with industry, academia and government stakeholders.

"Invitation to companies across the country and abroad to come forward and start operating their facilities from Shillong Technology Park," he said.

The Tech Park has been designed based on a plug-and-play model.

"The State Government has put impetus in setting up infrastructure in multiple sectors. It has usually been an ISP (Infrastructure, Services, People) approach: set-up the Infrastructure, on-board the required Services, and empower the People to benefit from the facilities," he added.

The first phase of the building has been completed and funded by the state government. For the subsequent phases, the government would encourage the Shillong Technology Park to operate on a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model.