Geneva, 30 June 2009 - Twenty-five senior managers from ports in Djibouti, Ghana, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Maldives, and Tanzania will participate in UNCTAD´s second Dublin-based Train-the-Trainers Workshop for English-speaking Port Communities.
The 30 June - 15 July workshop is being organized in cooperation with the Dublin Port Company (DPC), with financial support from Irish Aid. This is the second in a series of seminars to train port officials from English-speaking developing countries on port management and to prepare them for national replication of the UNCTAD Port Training Programme in beneficiary countries.
The workshop will cover modules 5-8 of the port-management course, continuing from the previous workshop, which covered modules 1-4 and was held in Dublin last year. Modules 5-8 include methods and tools of modern management in ports; economic and commercial management; administrative and legal management; and technical management and development of human resources.
Port communities in developing countries can foster economic development by providing efficient and competitive services to boost local and regional trade. The increasingly sophisticated nature of global port operations makes training essential. Moreover, international shipping and port communities need actively to address climate change and to take into account the broader implications of climate change for maritime transport. The UNCTAD programme helps port communities in developing countries to strengthen employees´ skills so that ports can keep up with the competition and meet new challenges.
To promote the development of human resources and skills in the maritime sector, the Human Resources Development Section of UNCTAD´s Division on Technology and Logistics (DTL), with the assistance of the Transport Section and the Trade Logistic Branch, has been implementing the TrainForTrade "Port Training Programme" since 1996. To date, the programme has trained over 1,000 port operators from 15 developing countries.
The upcoming workshop is a follow up to the Dublin Declaration of June 2007 -- an agreement adopted by port representatives of English-speaking African and Asian countries. Under the Declaration, missions have been organized by UNCTAD and the Dublin Port Company to assess the needs for development, training, and capacity building of the signature countries.
