RIYADH, 10 June 2005 — To diversify its manpower imports, Saudi Arabia has agreed to recruit some 1,000 trainers from Jordan for its training programs.
Jordan’s Vocational Training Corporation (VTC), which has signed an agreement with the Kingdom’s General Organization for Technical Educational & Vocational Training (GOTEVOT), will send the trainers to Saudi Arabia in a staggered schedule during the next 18 months.
“This first agreement is part of a program signed by the GOTEVOT and Amman-based VTC. It will boost links between Riyadh and Amman especially in education sector,” said VTC Director Ziad Matameh in a statement given to Arab News.
Matameh said the Saudi side will decide the number of trainers they need at each stage of the program, which will end in December next year.
According to the provisions, the Jordanian experts will run and assess training curricula for Saudi Arabia with VTC experts coming to the Kingdom to oversee the program.
The process of designing the “training portfolios” is expected to start in June and will be completed in December next year. The Saudi side will pay the VTC $1,450 a week for each expert the Jordanian corporation dispatches for this mission.
Saudi Arabia will also pay to the Jordanian side the cost of curricula design. In addition, under the program, the VTC will train 50 Saudi vocational trainers every year in various technical and vocational fields. Matameh said that the Saudis would also seek Jordanian help for a project to establish 50 vocational training centers in the Kingdom.
Other forms of cooperation include exchange visits, joint ventures and conducting studies of interest to both sides.
He said the cooperation between Jordan and Saudi Arabia has taken on new dimensions under this agreement.
Earlier this year, the VTC announced that Saudi Arabia agreed to give vocationally qualified Jordanians exclusive privileges in its labor market, equal to that of Saudi nationals.
Matameh said that if Jordanian labor replaced a tiny slice of the 7.5 million-strong Asian community working there, it would be enough to solve the bulk of the Jordan’s unemployment problem.
The VTC of Jordan has a huge infrastructure and it trains hundreds of thousands of Jordanians in its 45 centers every year.
