Portugal strengthens training support in São Tomé with new courses

O Portugal's Institute of Employment and Vocational Training (IEFP) announced today that it will strengthen support for vocational training in São Tomé and Príncipe with the opening of new courses and facilities to respond to increased demand.

The president of IEFP, Domingos Lopes, who is in São Tomé, where he met the Prime Minister, Américo Ramos, pointed out that the Professional Training Center of São Tomé and Príncipe has had “greater visibility and acceptance by the population”.

“ We will make a new wing, we will build a new pavilion, strengthen the rooms (...) to be able to integrate more young people, more candidates for training, because availability is limited ", said Domingos Lopes.

At the same time, the president of the IEFP said that cooperation will continue with a view to “capacitating the managers of the centre, training trainers”, and creating new areas of training, always contributing to the self-sustainability of institutions and countries.

Among the new courses that could be developed in São Tomé, the president of IEFP highlighted the mechatronic automobile, admitting that “there is much demand, namely electric or more electronic cars in which there are small failures and there is no installed capacity to recover them”.

“Therefore, here there is a great potential for employability of people who do this training and there is a need for these cars to be recovered,” he stressed.

Domingos Lopes added that the goal of the IEFP is to help the congenre Santomense to provide “formative responses and training possibilities for the population to better integrate into the labor market” of São Tomé and Príncipe, without discarding the absorption of those who opt for immigration.

“ It is clear that there is no installed capacity to absorb all these people, and in conjuncture in Portugal we are in fact in a situation of a significant shortage of labor, does not mean that we have closed the doors ", said Domingos Lopes, adding that Portugal privileges the work emigration of citizens from the African Countries of Portuguese Official Language (PALOP).

However, Domingos Lopes clarified that São Tomé and Príncipe and Cabo Verde are not Portugal’s priorities for work mobility projects to cope with the lack of manpower, and, in this case, Portugal has been betting on countries “that have an icommensurately larger population”, namely Angola and Mozambique, where there is “potential of satisfaction without harming countries”.

“ Here in Santo Tomé our objective is clearly to maintain the cooperation we have to empower people, because if people are qualified, they can exercise a profession with better quality, it is good for their lives, which is what matters”, he said.