Training

The 30 participants, all from countries that are Taiwan's diplomatic allies, are receiving training in the areas of automobile maintenance, carpentry and electrical engineering, said Lee Pai-po deputy secretary-general of the Taipei-based International Cooperation and Development Fund (TaiwanICDF).

The programme, which started Sept. 4 and runs until Dec. 22, is aimed at cultivating seed instructors for vocational training in the participating Pacific island countries, namely Kiribati, Nauru, Palau, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands and Solomon Islands, Lee said at a news briefing.

The first training of trainers on a national scale is about to take place on 17 September.

The training is run under the 6.1 million Euro, European Union Pacific Technical Vocational Education and Training in Sustainable Energy and Climate Change Adaptation Project (EU PacTVET) and is jointly implemented by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) and the University of the South Pacific.

The project covers 15 Pacific Island countries within the African Caribbean Pacific (ACP) group of states.