The Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) is funding a training program based on a German curriculum to educate 80 master trainers this year and help advance worker quality in industrial areas.

Kadin employment training deputy Miftahudin did not mention the cost of the program, but said Kadin had collected the required funds from member fees.

The 80 participants from various firms in Karawang and Bekasi, West Java, will be trained by German businesspeople’s group IHK Trier and tested by another German business group, EKONID, to ensure independent scoring.

The master trainers are expected to educate 1,000 trainers and 5,720 workers this year at 287 firms in five sectors — manufacturing, maritime, retail, tourism and banking — as a pilot project for the recently launched National Internship Program.

Kadin is in talks with the government about who will be in charge of funding and taking the program to other cities. It aims to see 2,640 firms nationwide involved in the program.

“We’re discussing with Bappenas [the National Development Planning Board] about which cities are next and who will train them,” Miftahudin said after inaugurating the first batch of trainers with their German counterparts on Friday.

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IHK Trier program coordinator Andreas Gosche explained that internship programs were common in Germany and there were 500,000 master trainers, more than the 12,000 school teachers in the country. That has led to a youth unemployment rate of only 6 percent in Germany, compared to Indonesia’s roughly 30 percent. (bbn)