India trains 500 civil servants of Maldives
By Our Special Correspondent
New Delhi, November 11: India has been a development partner of Maldives for years, which has been extended to capacity building of the civil servants of the archipelago. India has so far trained 500 civil servants from Maldives, while the aim is to train 1000 officials by 2024.
The Maldivian civil servants have been given exposure to the functioning of several of the schemes being run by the Central government. By training the civil servants of Maldives, India is aiming to keep the Chinese influence in check in the archipelago nation where Beijing has been trying its debt-trap strategy on the lines of Sri Lanka.
National Centre for Good Governance (NCGG), an autonomous apex institution of Government of India in partnership with the Ministry of External Affairs on Friday concluded its two-week 17th capacity building programme for civil servants of Maldives, which was started on October 31 this year. In 2019, during the visit of Maldives by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a MoU was signed between the NCGG and the Civil Services Commission (CSC) of Maldives, which envisaged capacity building activities of 1,000 civil servants of Maldives at NCGG over the next 5 years.
So far over 500 civil servants of island nation have been trained. Modi, during his visit to Maldives in June, 2019, had emphasized India’s ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy and assured India’s full support to Maldives in realizing its aspirations for broad-based socio-economic development and strengthening of democratic and independent institutions. India is the largest development partner of Maldives.
Bharat Lal, Director General, NCGG, on Friday on the completion of the training programme stressed that there is need to be sensitive and responsive in serving the people. He also suggested that it is necessary to work with speed and on a scale, and use digital technology in delivery of services. He also emphasized that after going back to Maldives, participants may utilize the knowledge and skills acquired during the programme. He also cited the example of ‘Chiranjivi yojana’ on maternal healthcare started 2006-07 for tribal women in Gujarat and said that such innovations and out of box thinking helps in leapfrogging and speedy service delivery.
“The capacity building programme for civil servants of developing countries aims at equipping them with cutting-edge knowledge, skills and tools to design and deliver effective public services in an increasingly complex and inter-dependent world. It is expected that this will establish good governance and ultimately achieve sustainable development apart from providing rich cross-country experience,” said the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pension in an official statement.
The NCGG is sharing various initiatives being taken in the country such as e-governance, digital India, universalization of public services to achieve sustainable development goals, usage of Aadhaar in service delivery, public grievance redressal mechanism and disaster management with special reference to coastal region among other important areas.
Eminent persons and domain experts from different fields conducted interactive sessions in the two-week programme, sharing their knowledge and experiences with the participants. The focus was on priority sectors of India–Maldives relations, regional cooperation initiatives in Indian ocean region, improving service delivery: an essence to citizen centric governance, PM Jan Dhan Yojana: positive impact on citizens lives, total quality management, public policy and implementation, challenges in achieving SDGs, tourism, composite culture of India, constitutional foundation of decentralization in India, public grievances redressal mechanism, PPPs, reforms in governance, overview of security scenario, digital India, agro-based practices in coastal areas, etc.
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Very good initiative by GOI through NCGG to train Maldives civil servants on good governance. This will help india to have good prosper sensible neighbours.
Great coverage with lots of details