IT”S a done deal. The provinces of Makira-Ulawa and Temotu will be added to list of eligible provinces alongside the province of Guadalcanal as part of the labour mobility partnership with Canada.
Last week in an extraordinary board meeting CITREC agreed to include the two provinces as part of its education and training programme.
On Monday this week the much anticipated approval for inclusion of both provinces into Tourism & Hospitality and Agriculture programme for Labour Mobility was also announced.
The successful inclusion of the two provinces was made possible when both provincial premiers had successful bilateral talks with Canadian International Training & Education Corp (CITREC) Chairman Mr Ashwant Dwivedi during his recent visit to Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands.
“I have yesterday communicated to both the premiers of Makira-Ulawa Stanley Siapu and Temotu Province Premier David Maina informing them that we have established allocation for inclusion of both the provinces into the labour mobility stream and that necessary training through CITREC would be made available to them to offer in August following which the people of respective provinces will join the leader, Guadalcanal province in sending its workers to Canada. It’s a done deal,” Chairman Dwivedi said.
Dwivedi said that given the Canadian government’s strong policy on women CITREC programme strongly promotes inclusion of women in its programme.
“We encourage and support any opportunity where women are included as part of education, training & labour mobility partnership,” Dwivedi said.
The Justin Trudeau’s Canadian Government had just announced at G7 summit that it has raised more than $3.8 billion in an effort with other countries to send the world’s poorest girls to school.
“Guadalcanal province through the strong leadership of its Premier Anthony Veke, has set a strong foundation where we see inclusion of women to both labour mobility and education and training programs that is presently offered in the Solomon Islands through CITREC’s partnership with GP. Both leaders Premier Stanley Siapu and Temotu Premier David Maina have especially asked during my first initial meeting that women from their respective provinces be considered and included in the labour mobility programmes. This is an approach I welcome,” Dwivedi said.
Dwivedi said that as part of partnership both the provinces will have same benefit to that is presently extended to Guadalcanal. Some of the benefits of the partnership include:
- Air travel benefit will be extended to residents of both Makira-Ulawa and Temotu provinces.
- Makira-Ulawa and Temotu provinces will also benefit from Remittances Arrangement where citizens of the province working in Canada will be remitting funds to their respective provinces each month.
- Makira-Ulawa and Temotu province graduates of the CITREC programmes will be eligible to apply for and join employment opportunities in Canada both as temporary foreign workers and as permanent residents.
During Dwivedi’s visit both provinces jointly signed a Memorandum of Understanding that provided CITREC with the necessary tool to begin process of inclusion of the two provinces into its labour mobility partnership.
In a statement through CITREC, Makira-Ulawa Premier Siapu said that he joins his colleague Premier of Temotu in thanking CITREC and officials of the Canadian government and sector council by considering including them into the programme.
“Thank you, Chairman Mr Dwivedi, for this opportunity. For us in the Makira-Ulawa province we see this opportunity as a golden opportunity. That has come our way to enable us to be developing the human resources capacity for people of my province, children, our youths and our students. This partnership will ensure that in years to come we begin to build our human resources capacity through our partnership with CITREC in Canada,” Siapu said.
Siapu further said that he is very fortunate that his dream of seeing his people and province being included into the CITREC partnership has happened during his term as Premier.
“We will ensure that in partnership with our sister province Temotu we begin to offer the programme in August and early next year we see some of our people leaving for employment opportunities in Canada whether as temporary workers or much better as Permanent Residence. We are very excited about the opportunity,” Siapu said.
Siapu also thanked Guadalcanal province, its Premier and the executives for providing the much-needed guidance to be able to join the CITREC programme.
“My staff at the Education office will continue to closely work with Guadalcanal Education authority officials to successfully roll out the programme,” Siapu said.
Temotu Premier Maina said that this is a great opportunity for his people and province to being part of this much rewarding programme.
“This programme will be rewarding programme for my people.”
Maina said that he widely supports the programme for being a gender balance one.
“As we strive to grow tourism in part of my province we want to be able to introduce Canadian tourism standards into our tourism sector. From what I see and hear from Guadalcanal Province CITREC has the best programme to offer to help introduce tourism standards. I want women to learn from this training and be part of the work force both in my province and in Canada when we send workers.”
–CITREC PRESS
