President Mohamed Nasheed has launched the information and communication technology adoption project – ‘Technology for the Future of Next Gen for the Maldives’ – with the grant aid from the government of India.
The project, ‘Technology for the Future of Next Gen’, will focus on improving the quality of Maldivian teachers by providing IT-enabled teaching skills and promoting ICT adoption amongst youth by providing them access to IT and vocational education.
Speaking at the ceremony held at Aarah this morning, the President underlined the need for skills training to increase youth employment in the country.
Stating that over 50 percent of the country’s population was youth and “vast majority of this youth is unemployed”, he noted creating a skilled youth population was a central part of the government’s election manifesto.
However, he said they remained jobless not because there were no jobs, but “they are unemployed because they are not skilled. They do not have the necessary skills for them to be find employment.”
He said “we have to be able to train more than 10000 young people to all sorts of different semi skilled and skilled levels” and added that this project with the aid from the Indian government was a beginning.
The project aims to provide ICT training to 2880 teachers and 1600 youth, and vocational training to 800 youth over two years.
NIIT, the leading Global Talent Development Corporation and one of the Asia’s best ICT trainers, has been appointed as an implementation partner for the project in association with Electrical Engineering Equipment Company (EEEC) of Chennai, India.
The first phase of the project, already completed, involved training needs assessment. As the second phase, a stakeholder workshop was held today following the launch of the project, at Aarah, to provide awareness to ensure full cooperation of all government and state institutions for the project.
Training programmes both for teachers and youth will begin on1 July 2011.
The Maldives government signed the agreement with the government of India to launch large-scale ICT development initiatives across the country, on 23 January this year. The Indian government will provide US$5.7 million of grant aid for the project.
In his inaugural remarks today, the President expressed his gratitude for the continued assistance and engagement of the Indian government with the Maldives.
He added that the Maldives was “grateful that the Indian government has understood our needs.”
President Nasheed further revealed that “the Indian government is, we are happy to say, ready to enter into a number of partnerships with the government of Maldives, with the vision, with the intention of creating capacity in the Maldives as well as assisting us in our development.”
