Address by Mr. Pedro Daniel Weinberg, Director of Cinterfor/ILO,
at the opening ceremony of the 36th Meeting of the Technical Committee
La Antigua, Guatemala, 28 to 30 July of 2003

 

Lic. Víctor Moreira, Minister of Labour and Social Security of Guatemala,
Members of the Board of Directors of INTECAP,
Lic. María Ledvia Berganza, Manager of INTECAP,
Lic. Jorge Gallardo, Assistant Manager of INTECAP,
Mr. Trevor Riordan, IFP/Skills, ILO,
Ladies and gentlemen,

First of all, on behalf of Mr. Juan Somavía, Director General of the International Labour Office, and Mr. Agustín Muñoz, Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, I would like to convey to you a very cordial welcome to the thirty sixth Meeting of the Cinterfor/ILO Technical Committee. Through it we express the Organisation's recognition to the representatives of Member States of the Americas and Spain on the ILO Governing Body that have accepted our convocation to debate here at Antigua, Guatemala, subjects of concern to vocational training bodies in the region, and to examine the Report of Activities 2001-2001 that I am submitting for your consideration in my capacity of Director of Cinterfor/ILO.

Our Director General and Regional Director would also like to express their gratitude to the authorities and people of Guatemala for their hospitality and warm welcome, as well as the facilities they have provided for holding the event. In particular, to the Technical Institute for Training and Productivity (INTECAP), its authorities and personnel, the heartfelt thanks of the ILO, and of Cinterfor/ILO in particular.

From your analysis, contributions and suggestions, the ILO Director General expects to draw on this occasion guidelines to design short and medium-term tasks for the development of training in the Iberian American Region to be conducted by Cinterfor.

To begin with, I should like to share with you some of the ideas that have prevailed in recent years. Globalisation has been predominant in the political picture, as well as in power and finance. In the last few decades, this phenomenon has opened national and international markets to growing competition, that has no doubt been enhanced by the force of information and communications technologies.

It is evident that the process of globalisation has generated greater wealth and welfare; but many feel that despite this, inequalities and social exclusion persist. In other words, there are reasons for concern in a situation where the benefits of development and welfare are delayed. The ILO has decided to face this challenge by promoting equitable development and a globalisation that leaves nobody out. That is the sense of the Decent Work Programme that the Organisation is promoting.

Decent work is a forceful instrument for picking the way and the contribution the ILO can make for achieving the objectives adopted by the United Nations in its Millennium Declaration. The four strategic objectives adopted, that are also the dimensions making up the concept of Decent Work, are employment, entitlements, protection and dialogue. They are an updated expression of the Organisation's mandate and a development strategy responding to the most urgent cravings of men and women nowadays. We are persuaded that work is of the greatest importance for all people everywhere, and a decisive aspect of human existence.

The challenge for the ILO is to devise development processes contemplating the generation of employment in sufficient quantity and quality. Narrowing the current shortfall of decent work is the unavoidable duty of our contemporary societies.

Ladies and gentlemen, faced with such challenges, the role of vocational training is not only ratified but reinforced and diversified. Furthermore, we think that vocational training is both a pre-requisite for providing decent jobs for all, and an integral part of the very concept of decent work.

Along these lines of thought, we justly value the efforts that have been made in the region of the Americas centring on the tasks of Cinterfor/ILO and focusing on the role of training for the promotion of decent work.

Thus, analysis and studies have been carried out in this connection. Seminars, technical meetings and workshops have been held at national, sub-regional and regional level, jointly organised by vocational training institutes and the Centre, with the support of the ILO regional and world structures, that have made important, innovative contributions. For that purpose, the ILO has provided technical support through its regional units and relevant services at headquarters.

As a rule, most development and growth strategies do not duly take into account educational and vocational training needs, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of workers and persons living in poverty have no access to training opportunities.

We must consequently acknowledge that the role of vocational training is not circumscribed to the attention of the more dynamic and modern sectors of the economy; nor is it a safety net for men and women living in poverty and in conditions of daily vulnerability. The alternative cannot be - must not be - designing two types of policies and strategies: a vocational training for some and a "productivist" vocational training for others. The kind of training demanded by our contemporary economies and societies is that required at this moment in history, that may contribute to our countries' overall efforts for achieving greater social equity and integration with higher levels of productivity and competitiveness. Nowadays, vocational training should also be capable of managing not only the knowledge of persons but that of productive organisations, and local, national, sub-regional and regional levels. To sum up, vocational training -says the ILO Director General- is essential to improve people's productivity, income, and equitable access to greater and better employment opportunities.

Training is therefore acquiring predominant importance on the ILO agenda. This is evident both in the role it has been ascribed in the decent work programme in general, and in the different ways it intervenes in the Organisation's technical co-operation schemes intended to raise the levels of competitiveness of economies and to overcome the different forms of social exclusion and the alarming levels of poverty that exist nowadays.

The ILO commitment is also manifest in other spheres, namely in international labour standards. As you are aware, the Organisation is currently reviewing its Recommendation 150 on Development of Human Resources and Training. This has already been discussed at the International Labour Conferences of 2001 and 2003, and has been included in the agenda for next year.

In 2004, the ILO Member States shall adopt a new text for this Recommendation, that is supposed to guide future developments in training. In this respect I should like to convey to you all our satisfaction with the progress made so far. And we are doubly satisfied because on the one hand, discussions have so far ratified the timeliness of having reopened the debate at the highest level within the Organisation. And on the other hand, because the subjects incorporated do not differ much from the progress made in training in the Iberian American region. The new approaches that are being considered in connection with the review of Recommendation 150 are matters that, in daily theory and practice, have already been postulated and tried out by the vocational training institutions in the region.

The current prospects and developments of certain topics are proof of this. I mean - among other things - issues such as lifelong training, social dialogue, the participation of employers' and workers' organisations, employability, training for entrepreneurship, training and certification by competencies, strengthening the institutionality of training, a concern with youth enmployment, the incorporation of a gender dimension to programmes and policies, etc.

For all these reasons I call on you all - who are responsible for vocational training in the region - to take active part in the preparatory work and in the debates at the Ninety Second International Labour Conference, scheduled for July 2004.

By your leave, I shall now proceed to refer all but briefly to some of the many advances made in training through the action of Ministries of Labour and Education, and above all, that of specialised institutions, in the region of the Americas.

I should like to underline the efforts made to build up the institutionality of training, both regarding processes of institutional modernisation and transformation, and the generation of new spaces for participation and social dialogue in training and the inclusion of a gender perspective in it.

I shall only quote two examples. The first one refers to the adoption by training institutes of systems for quality management. This is one of the most noteworthy developments in recent years: certification by international standards of national institutions, operational units at state, province or sectoral level, training centres and processes. Such facts are eloquent proof of the commitment of VT institutions with the provision of good quality, relevant services. The second example are the many innovations that are taking place in the management of training bodies and programmes. I mean by this management at local level, sectoral level, bipartite management, regional management, the increasingly frequent inclusion of training in collective bargaining, in national agreements and pacts, etc.

Secondly, we ascribe great importance to the efforts being made by some countries to rethink and reorganise training within the parameters of a lifelong education. Considerable human and financial resources are being devoted to that purpose and some ambitious projects are being undertaken to bring about an aspiration: ongoing training as the right of all persons. Ascribing institutional funds is an obligation for governments, and making that possible is a task for all societies.

A third inescapable aspect is meeting (sometimes foretelling) the demands for integrated productive development. In just a few years, a very remarkable thing has happened throughout the region. A significant number of vocational training centres, apart from their traditional function of delivering courses, also provide technological information services, offer technical assistance and consulting support, carry out applied research, implement quality certification services for products and services, etc. They do it all in the conviction of giving an integral response to the needs of working men and women, firms and enterprises, productive fabrics, economic sectors and so forth. A change can be perceived in the way many training bodies conceive their task. Many of them are beginning to realise that their responsibility does not end when they hand out certificates for the courses they have imparted. Quite the contrary: they are becoming involved with developing various production management techniques, like the creation of enterprises and assistance to graduates by means of enterprise incubators, business nurseries, industrial areas, technological parks, productive chains, etc.

The fourth and last item I should like to mention in this brief enumeration is training and certification by competencies. In scarcely more than five years, the training approach based on occupational competencies has become widespread, and practically all countries have undertaken processes of institutional transformation and technical-teaching redesign for adopting it. Revamping training programmes around performance on the job has made it necessary to restructure training in terms of current production and labour processes, and according to the requirements of the realm of work. The transition from training programmes based on "skills" to curricula conceived in terms of "competencies" has facilitated the recognition of the diverse aptitudes and know-how of men and women, and has led to an admirable process of institutional reengineering that we fully appreciate.

I should like to conclude this message by briefly referring to Cinterfor/ILO. To our mind, the Centre must be seen as the result of a successful strategic alliance between the ILO Member States of the Iberian American region and the ILO itself. The ILO specialised bodies of the region in their various forms together with Headquarters have shaped this initiative, that has several positive traits.

It is an initiative in which all countries of the region and Spain have taken part, and has been based from its beginnings on an original conception of technical co-operation, namely, the promotion of horizontal collaboration. No less important, it is an undertaking that has been growing and consolidating through the years.

The region and the ILO itself have in the past seen other initiatives of wide impact, but very few that have achieved such permanence and sustainability. And allow me to insist that the success of this undertaking lies in the formulas that the countries and the ILO have found to consolidate their commitments in the field of vocational training.

In consequence, Cinterfor/ILO cannot be seen merely as an initiative operating from Montevideo, Republic of Uruguay. In order to exist, the Centre has had to reach every corner of the Americas and Spain where co-operation activities are under way. The life of Cinterfor/ILO rests upon the striving of the men and women who work in vocational training institutions, in the organisations responsible for training policies and in all ILO operational units and projects in the region, ILO services at headquarters and throughout the world.

Ladies and gentlemen: on behalf of our Director General and Regional Director I call upon you to redouble our efforts for the welfare of the peoples and the success of the economies of the Iberian American region. The ILO will continue to support insofar as possible this regional collective effort. We therefore expect vocational training institutions to continue to do the same.

We shall look forward to the pronouncement of this 36th Meeting of the Technical Committee in order to respond ever more closely to what is expected from us by the men and women of the Iberian American region, and specially by its vocational training bodies, and the employers' and workers' organisations of Member States of the ILO here represented. And also to find out whether Cinterfor/ILO continues to be a suitable and necessary instrument for the training and development of the human resources of these countries.

The Inter-American Centre for Knowledge Development in Vocational Training (ILO/Cinterfor)
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