The Government, through the Secretariat of State of the Council of Ministers (SoSCM) in cooperation with the Linguistic National Institute (LNI), started a Standard Tétum Course intended for staff responsible for the communication and media area in the Government. The course takes place in the Secretariat of State for Defence Meeting Room, in the Government Palace, Díli. The course started Wednesday, March 31, 2011.
The Director General from the SoSCM, Victor Maia, said that “this course is important for staff responsible for communication, so they can use a uniform Tétum in the press releases and all the information issued by the Government, according to the Tétum spelling standards approved by Government Decree n.o 1/2004 from April, 14.
It is important that the public access information about the IV Constitutional Government’s activities and programs, thus the Government, through the SoSCM, has established means to disseminate Government information in Tétum, Portuguese and English, such as the Government website, radio and television programs and the Government page in the national newspapers: STL, Timor Post, JN Diário and Tempo Semanal”, highlighted the Director General, Victor Maia.
The President of the Public Service Commission, Libório Pereira, also present at the course opening, said “everyday, in the public institutions, the staff use Tétum and Portuguese according to their capacity. If we compare documents written 10 years ago and those written recently we see improvements, even though they still not up to standard. Because of that the RDTL Government made an effort to give to the staff and public servants the opportunity to attend this Tétum course. The correspondence in the public service is no longer made in Bahasa Indonesia and started to be done in the two official languages: Tétum and Portuguese”.
The Director of the Linguistic National Institute, Benjamin Corte-Real, in his speech, highlighted “the way to use Tétum according to the standard, is a job of the State, through the Government policy, in the drafting of laws and regulations and the creation of a mechanism so that public servants and the general public cannot turn away from fulfilling their duty of learning Tétum and in this way sustain the language’s value. It is up to the INL to research, write and disseminate articles seeking to encourage the will of the ones who pretend to learn the standard Tétum”.
The course takes place everyday, during one month and is intended for public servants and agents of the Ministries and Secretariats of State.