The operational capacity of the staff of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will soon be receiving a boost with the planned restructuring of the Foreign Service Institute.
According to a press release from the Government Information Agency (GINA), Minister of Foreign Affairs Carl Greenidge outlined the administration’s plans to revitalise the Institute and emphasised that the aim is to equip the professional staff with the requisite knowledge and skills, which would allow them to operate in the sphere of international diplomacy.
Greenidge said that the agency’s staff needed to be experienced in the practice, requirements, strategies and tactics of international diplomacy. To this end, the ministry will be contracting qualified persons from the United Nations Development Programme who have served as ambassadors to impart their knowledge and experience to the agency’s staff, GINA said. He further said that they will be equipped with a wider range of skills in language, digitisation and sciences.
With regards to the present system in place, Greenidge pointed out that there are ongoing arrangements for staff to be selected and sent on training courses. He mentioned staff members being sent to Japan to learn Japanese and to Chile to undertake a course in diplomacy.
Mexico, one of several counties which have offered further training of local professional staff, has programmes on stream at the graduate and post-graduate levels, the GINA release noted.
