JEDDAH: The Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry yesterday welcomed a suggestion from a visiting Japanese delegation of establishing a high institute for providing vocational training in electronics and home appliances to young Saudis.
Saleh Al-Turki, chairman of the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI), who met with the delegation, said he welcomed the suggestion and suggested that the proposal could be studied further.
“The main purpose of our visit is to seek cooperation with the Kingdom’s chambers of commerce and industry for developing human resource,” Yoshitaka Nakamura, managing director of Tokyo-based Japan Cooperation Center for the Middle East, who headed a 15 member delegation from Tokyo, told Arab News.
“It is in this connection, we have come up with a suggestion to start a high institute for providing training in electronics and home appliances here,” he added.
The visit is a follow-up of an agreement signed during the Saudi Japanese Business Council meeting held in Riyadh in January. “We also understand that human resource is on top of the agenda of the Kingdom’s chambers of commerce and industry,” Nakamura said.
Asked whether the high institute suggested is like the Saudi Japanese Automobile High Institute, which in the past few years has been training hundreds of Saudis in Jeddah, Japanese Consul General Toshimitsu Ishigure said: “It is something like that, but the idea is to establish a high institute in Riyadh and its branch in Jeddah to cover the field of technologies related to electronics and home appliances.”
There is as yet no idea to involve major Japanese electronics companies to participate in the setting up of and running such an institute because it is still in its proposal stage. “Maybe their involvement will be forthcoming at a later stage,” he added.
Nippon Engineering College will be involved in designing the curriculum of the proposed institute. It will be designed by Sigaru Chiba, vice chairman of Nippon Engineering College, said.
