The “Tech Fair 2019” held in Ukulhas of Alif Alif atoll has successfully concluded.

While Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abdulla Shahid inaugurated the three-day conference as Special Envoy of President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, it was held in the freshly established International Convention Center in the island.

The 13th International Conference on Software, Knowledge, Information Management and Applications “SKIMA 2019” was also held during the past few days, of which the title sponsor was Ooredoo Maldives.

Speaking at the closing ceremony of the tech fair, Dr Keshav Dahal, Chairman of SKIMA 2019 said that a lot of hard work was put into making the event a success. He also revealed that the next SKIMA conference in 2020 will be in Kuala Lampur in Malaysia.

Professor Hassan Ugail, who initiated the conference, said that this approach was a people empowerment program. He said that the success of the conference is measured by how much it has touched the community of the island, in one way or another.

He said that the event taught and empowered children through the artworks they crafted, which is something they are giving to the community.

Further, he expressed his gratitude to everyone behind the success of the event, especially the island residents, who “came out prior to the day of the event, to clean the island”.

Also speaking at the event, Former President and current Speaker of Parliament, Mohamed Nasheed said that the Ukulhas council hopes to use the new Convention Center for similar conferences and workshops.

Nasheed thanked Professor Ugail for the initiative and all the doctors, professors and other participants of the three-day conference, on behalf of President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih and his government.

This conference was held at a time the country is again embarking on consolidating democratic gains. Gains that we lost during the last few years, said Nasheed, who went on to invite all participants to hold their conferences at the center, where they are “most welcome”.

While the International Convention Center inaugurated in the island earlier on Monday is the first of its kind outside of capital city Malé and Addu city, during the inauguration, FM Shahid highlighted that the center will play a major role in empowering the island’s community and help its council to provide important services to them,

With this being said, Solih’s government highly prioritizes empowering island communities in such manners.

Roughly MVR eight million was allocated for the construction of the center, funded by the governments of Maldives and India.