DUSHANBE, February 13, Asia-Plus  -- An official presentation of the Second Phase of the Primary Professional Education Support Project was held in Dushanbe yesterday.      

The project is implemented by DVV International, which is the Institute for International Cooperation of the German Adult Education Association (DVV), under financial support of the European Commission (EC), the source at a MoE said.  

Speaking at the presentation ceremony, Deputy Education Minister, Farhod Rahimov, noted that after thorough analysis of technical potentials of Tajik vocational-technical schools, the country’s education authorities had pointed to the necessity of modernization of that educational sphere.  “The results of analysis have shown that the vocational-technical schools currently trained students only in five or six specialties, while study of demands of labor markets  of Tajikistan and CIS states shows that it is necessary to train specialists in hundred specialties,” the deputy minister said.    

Ms Charlotte Adrian, Head of the EC Delegation in Tajikistan, for her part, noted that the second phase of the project is aimed at training of skilled personnel in different specialties.  Within the framework of the second phase, the European Commission will help the Tajik Ministry of Education improve the primary professional education through providing some 275,000 euros. 

The second phase designed for two years will be launched in March.  The two-staged primary professional education support project was launched in Tajikistan in 2006.   

DVV International operates nationally and internationally.  It promotes the exchange of information and expertise on adult education and development throughout Europe and worldwide, provides support for the establishment and development of adult education institutions in developing countries and countries in transition, as well as provides in-service training, advice and media for global and intercultural education and for learning about European politics.   

There are currently around 150 members of staff. Of these, some 30 are at headquarters, 10 are project leaders working in the field, and 110 are local staff in the project offices.  The funding for its project work comes largely from grants from the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and other Ministries in Germany, as well as from the European Union, the World Bank and other donors of public funds, increasingly via bidding procedures.