As
part of a little-known United Nations-sponsored initiative seeking the
transfer of technology from more advanced areas to under-funded or
underprivileged locations, the Jefferson City Hall will soon be
receiving a vast amount of much-needed help in the form of office
equipment and computer hardware at virtually no cost.The African nation of Rwanda has graciously pledged to send Jefferson's city hall a wide range of items, which will effectively upgrade Jefferson's municipal technology, making it more compatible with other communities in the area. The city of Jefferson will be responsible for all shipping and customs fees, estimated to be about $125,000.
Jefferson Iowa News has obtained an abbreviated listing of the office equipment that will be received. Among other items, the shipment will include: 24 Brother electric typewriters, ribbons, 9 rotary phones, 2 mimeograph machines, 1 hectograph, carbon paper, 1 teletype machine, 19 LED electronic desk-top calculators, 16 gallons of correction fluid, several dozen slide rules, 64 folding chairs, and 24 cases of "Like" cola.
The most impressive gift, however, will be the arrival of 12 Commodore 64 PC's, which are described as
"8-bit home computers with 64 kb of RAM." They will use the Commodore Basic 2.0 Operating System.
Officials
within city hall are currently seeking qualified instructors who will be
needed to conduct classes, training all necessary personnel on the
operation of these ultra-modern systems. Schedules for these training
classes will be posted by this web site as they become available.No jobs are scheduled to be eliminated, in spite of the technological upgrades that will occur. Rather, municipal authorities state that several new openings will eventually be created, as required for the maintenance and ongoing training which will result.
Rick Bland, 09-17-2008