President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has conveyed his well wishes to Indonesia's delegation of 36 vocational high school (SMK) graduates who will compete in the 45th WorldSkills Competition that opens next Thursday in Kazan, Russia.

Jokowi welcomed the participants during a meeting on Wednesday at Merdeka Palace in Jakarta and conveyed his optimism that the delegates would do their best at the competition.

The President said during the occasion that Education and Culture Minister Muhadjir Effendy and Manpower Minister Hanif Dhakiri had told him about the competition and that Indonesian teams had performed well in past competitions.

“I have been told that we often win the gold medal in specific vocations, and I believe that those are where our strengths lie,” Jokowi said.

He continued that the WorldSkills competition provided an opportunity for Indonesian participants to show their talents to the rest of the world, as well as to learn a variety of skills from the delegates of other countries.

“The world has changed, unlike the old days. Skills that we initially did not think [would become important] are now becoming jobs,” he said. “I believe we can see this from the competition in Kazan.”

The Indonesian contingent is to compete among participants from more than 60 countries in 29 out of 56 skills categories across a wide range of industries in the biennial WorldSkills competition, which runs this year from Aug. 22 to 27.

Education minister Muhadjir said the Indonesian team chose to compete in the 29 categories in which it was confident of winning.

These categories included cooking, fashion technology, landscape gardening, mobile robotics and mechatronics, he said. (tru/afr)