On 18 March, the Ministry of State Administration, in partnership with AusAID, opened the Training Course for Facilitators at the National Employment and Vocational Training Centre (CNEFP) in Tibar. The training course will last eight months and will be attended by two hundred trainees.

The main objective of this training course is to prepare the young trainees who will then become facilitators at the time of implementation of the National Programme for Suco Development (PNDS). They will provide assistance to the communities which, in turn, will decide on the development within their own sucos.

The Vice Prime Minister, Fernando La Sama de Araújo, asked the young trainees to show commitment and to compete among themselves on a positive manner “for, among the two hundred trainees, only those who complete their training with the best results will return to their respective sucos and be in a position to contribute to their respective development”.

The Minister of State Administration, Jorge da Conceição Teme, stated that PNDS is a Government programme to be extended throughout the national territory, in accordance with Government Resolution n.° 1/2012. Its objective is to strengthen the relations between the Government and the communities in the sucos. “This programme intends to explore the methods to attend to and respond to the needs and the priorities experienced by the communities in their sucos so that the same communities may benefit from the emergency financial support in the construction and rehabilitation of basic infrastructures, notably rural roads, schools, clinics and other infrastructures”.

The Australian Ambassador, Miles Armitage, expressed his satisfaction over the fact that “Australia is supporting the People and Government of Timor-Leste in the implementation of PNDS, thereby insisting in the cooperation among the Timorese so that they themselves may find solutions to their own problems”. Miles Armitage encouraged the trainees to keep confident, committed, willing to learn and to broaden their knowledge, with a spirit of mutual help in order to find solutions for the development process, for solutions should always come from the communities themselves and not from outside”.