President Dr. Irfaan Ali has expressed his disappointment in regional leaders for failing to capitalise on the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) programme, describing it as a missed opportunity to build capacity across the Caribbean.
On Monday, he urged police commissioners across the region to take immediate action to utilise the available opportunities within the programme, as was similarly encouraged by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his visit to Georgetown last year for the 2nd India-CARICOM Summit.
“I would say I’m very disappointed in the region, and I’ll tell you why,” President Ali said during the opening ceremony of the Association of Caribbean Police Commissioners’ (ACCP) Annual General Meeting and Conference which is being held in Guyana from May 12 – 16.
“When Prime Minister Modi was here, he emphasised that there are thousands of training opportunities under the ITEC programme in India. In the last four years, hundreds of our officers have benefited from training in the ITEC programme in the most sophisticated fields at every level. I found out that they have not received any or very few applications from the region for training under the ITEC programme,” President Ali lamented.
Against this backdrop, he challenged regional police commissioners to examine the ITEC programme and make full use of it.
The Guyanese President also stated that he would take it upon himself to personally follow-up on all applications submitted.
“You have thousands of training opportunities that you can select from under the ITEC programme, free of cost, that are available, and we’re not making use of it. So, I would challenge the commissioners here to have a look at the ITEC programme. I’ll have the Commissioner of Police in Guyana have the entire listing, and to identify areas that you can benefit from under the ITEC programme, and have this year, and I can champion this for you, get the application in, and I’m telling you, I will take a personal interest in ensuring I follow up on all the applications that are coming from the region under the ITEC programme, because the opportunities are there. Tremendous opportunities for training,” President Ali encouraged.
The ITEC programme is a leading capacity-building platform of the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. Instituted in 1964, ITEC is one of the oldest institutionalised arrangements for international capacity building, having trained more than 200,000 officials from over 160 countries in both civilian and defence sectors.
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