With the rising fortunes of China globally and the need for relevance in the emerging economies, Akwa Ibom State Government has kicked-off Chinese language training for its workforce.
Already, the first batch of over twenty workers in the State government employ has commenced an intensive two months training at the Juuldaam Chinese Language Study Centre in Uyo.
Inaugurating the training programme yesterday, state commissioner for Information and Strategy, Comrade Ini Ememobong said, government took the step because Chinese companies have become a strong force to reckon with globally and currently undertaking highbrow businesses in the state.
According to Ememobong, it has become expedient to ease interpretation of MoU and contract agreements between the State Government and the Chinese firms especially those operating in the state.
.
“The safest people to interpret for government are the civil servants, and the establishment in which such crop of workers are domiciled is the Ministry of Information.
“Also, in considering the fact that the contractual documents may be written in foreign language, there must be quality control in the translation in order to ensure that government interest is protected at all times, and that can only be guaranteed by a government employee.” The commissioner emphasized.
While thanking the screening committee for a job well, he congratulated the first batch of Information Officers participating in the training exercise and urged them to embrace the opportunity in wholeheartedly in order to justify the enormous investment made by government in the project.
In his welcome address, Regional Manager of Juuldaam Training Academy and lead training consultant, Dr. Anthony Akadi, explained that the acquisition of foreign languages would enable learners to be more open-minded to the culture and values of foreigners, which would in turn promote trust in business deals.
Akadi said, with Akwa Ibom fast becoming a destination to investors, any deliberate attempt at investing in lingual training for government employees remained a good strategy to eradicate communication barriers during international procurement, contract signing and project execution.
He assured that, international best practices would be followed in the training programme and expressed the optimism that the trainees would draw value to the state government at the completion of the programme.
A Chinese language lead instructor, Dr.Idongesit Etim, alleyed fears about the complexity of acquiring Chinese Language amongst students stating that like in every other language, learning and understanding Chinese language would require concentration, patience and a good mindset.
