India to help train 1,000 civil servants of Maldives over next five years

The National Centre for Good Governance (NCGG), India's leading civil services training institution, has entered into an agreement with the Maldives Civil Services Commission for capacity building of 1,000 civil servants from the Maldives over the next five years, an official statement issued on Sunday said.

The agreement was signed during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Male, the capital of the Maldives, on Saturday.

The agreement envisages that the NCGG will be the nodal institution for designing customised training modules and its implementation, taking into account the requirements of the Maldives Civil Services Commission.

The subject matters of the training programme will include public administration, e-governance and service delivery, public policy and governance, information technology, best practices in fisheries in coastal areas, agro-based practices, self-help group initiatives, urban development and planning and ethics in administration, the statement said.

The Maldives will nominate suitable civil servants in the senior or executive or middle management levels as per the agreed timelines.

Further, the NCGG will assist the Civil Services Training Institute, a subsidiary of the Maldives Civil Services Commission, to develop training programmes and materials and assist in organising exchange of experts as needed by the Civil Services Commission, it said.

The Ministry of External Affairs will bear all expenses pertaining to the training programme, the statement issued by Personnel Ministry said.

K V Eapen, Director General, NCGG and Secretary to the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances, said the NCGG trained 28 civil servants from the Maldives in April and this successful engagement encouraged the two countries to take the collaboration forward.

Eapen said in 2019, the NCGG has successfully conducted training programmes for the civil servants of Bangladesh, Myanmar, the Gambia and the Maldives.