By Staff Reporter
WINDHOEK
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Marco Hausiku, says after 18 years of independence, issues like quality education for all, skills development, affirmative action and human resource development strategies were high on Namibia’s national agenda and ITEC as a cooperation partnership addressed those needs.
In a speech read on his behalf by his deputy Lempy Lucas at the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) Day, Hausiku thanked the government of India for its valuable contribution to Namibia’s economic and social development and observed that while bringing together ITEC alumni with experts from the Namibian Government, the civil society and India, Namibia could enhance its experience and find solutions that would improve the lives of Namibians.
ITEC Day was celebrated at the residence of the Indian High Commissioner, Tsewang Topden, recently.
Training should be a continuous process to advance Namibians and the deputy minister hoped that India, the cradle of many complex scientific concepts, would offer many more Namibians that golden opportunity.
Speaking at the occasion, the Indian High Commissioner stated that India and Namibia enjoy warm and cordial ties and that Namibia, as an ITEC partner country, had been availed more than 400 scholarships since 1990. Under ITEC India offers full scholarships to selected candidates, return international airfares, tuition fee, accommodation, medical facilities, stipend, book allowance and study tour.
The High Commissioner expressed India’s commitment to human resource development and capacity building in Namibia under the ITEC programme and proposed projects such as the Pan-African e-Network, IT Kiosks and setting up of the faculty of mining engineering and IT and augmentation of the Faculty of Economics and Management Science at the University of Namibia.
He said courses availed to Namibians are in critical sectors ranging from IT, software skills, English language – speaking and writing – to rural development, remote sensing, entrepreneurship development and SMEs and he urged Namibians to actively participate in the ITEC programme, aimed towards human resource development and capacity building that would contribute to Namibia’s socio-economic development and Vision-2030.
The ITEC Day was attended by ITEC alumni, ITEC experts from India in Namibia, senior faculty members from the Unam and Polytechnic, senior members of the media, Namibian Government officials, SMEs and members of the Indian community.