ITEC DAY 15 SEPTEMBER 2021

The Honorable TEERUTHRAJ HURDOYAL, Minister of Public Service, Administrative and Institutional Reforms,

Honourable Teenah Jutton, Parliamentary Private Secretary,

H.E. Mr. BOYRAM BOLI BOJRAJ SINGH, Secretary for Public Service,

Mrs. Jhowry Chandanee, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Public Service, Administrative and Institutional Reforms,

Mr. Yudhisteer Munbodh, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Social Integration, Social Security and National Solidarity,

1. KRISHNA JUGROO, Deputy Commissioner of Police,

Senior officials from the Ministry of Public Service, Administrative and Institutional Reforms,

Officials of the Mauritius Police Force and other Ministries and Organisations of the Government of Mauritius,

Our dear ITEC Alumni,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Namaskar, Bon Jour! A very good afternoon to all of you! I am delighted to welcome you all to the High Commission of India for the ITEC Day celebration this year and extend my warmest greetings on this occasion.

2. ITEC collaboration between Mauritius and India would not have been possible and today’s ITEC Day celebrations would not be taking place without the participation of our honoured ITEC Alumni and the presence of the esteemed officials from the Government of Mauritius, who make this partnership possible. So, I sincerely thank each one of you, our ITEC family members and alumni from various Ministries and organisations, for taking time out of your very busy schedules to be with us today to commemorate our association and celebrate our bonds. Due to COVID related sanitary protocols, we could not invite all our ITEC Alumni for the event, but we are looking forward to other occasions where we will have the opportunity to engage with them. I would like to convey my special, heartfelt thanks to the Honurable Minister H.E. Mr. Hurdoyal for taking time out of his very busy schedule to grace this event.
3. Today is an important day as we celebrate the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation Programme day, popularly known as ITEC Day, worldwide, along with our large, extended ITEC family spread across 160 countries. On this day, we remember that our Government instituted the ITEC programme in the early 1960s, barely a decade of becoming an independent country, when we were ourselves struggling with multiple challenges as one of the poorest countries of the world. You might wonder - why did India launch the ITEC initiative when we had enough challenges of our own as a young, poor and overpopulated nation? The answer is simple – we wanted to assist and help other developing countries facing similar struggles and challenges, by sharing our experiences and lessons learnt, to whatever extent we could, because we knew what an uphill battle it was to throw off the yoke of long colonial rule and develop a country’s agriculture, infrastructure, industry, services sector from the grassroots. We did this because as India, we come from a civilizational ethos that believes that all of creation is one; we are all inter-dependent and we can only prosper and grow together, never at the cost of another.  The Universe is a play of cohabitation and harmonious coexistence, not of competition and domination.  This is anchored in our deep seated belief of ‘VASUDHAIVA KUTUMBAKAM’ (The World is One Family) and our prayer of ‘SARVEJANA SUKHINA BHAVANTU – May Everyone Prosper and May everyone Be Happy’.  This is the vision that India was guided by when we started the ITEC Program as a young nation, despite several domestic challenges and resource constraints. This is the vision that India continues to be guided by, even when we are the 5^th largest economy in the world today.  This is the vision to which we recommit ourselves to for the future, as we celebrate Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav to mark 75 years of India’s independence. As our Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi says, India’s growth will be a force for peace, stability and prosperity for the whole world.  India will continue to stand shoulder to shoulder and walk hand in hand with developing countries and friendly partners like Mauritius in their journey towards national building, development and empowerment.
4. This spirit of India is amply demonstrated even as I speak, in the ongoing Covid pandemic, which requires a collective approach and global cooperation. As a responsible team player, India was one of the first few countries to come forward and share its resources, know-how, expertise and support mechanisms to help partner countries. Be it medicines, vaccines, medical teams or sharing our digital tools to combat Covid such as our CoWin online Platform, India has emerged as a ‘first responder’. It was with the same spirit that India dispatched 23 tonnes of life-saving medicines and deployed a 10-member Medical Response Team on the request of the Government of Mauritius last year to assist in handling the Covid pandemic, and supplied Covid vaccines earlier this year, within days of launching the vaccination drive in India. The fact that we supplied vaccines to Mauritius and other friendly countries under our ‘Vaccine Maitri’ initiative despite our own massive requirements in India and our huge population, demonstrates our commitment to sharing our resources with those in need, even during the worst crises.

Distinguished guests,

5. As you know, ITEC offers training programme across a range of important sectors like agriculture, governance, IT, health, finance, sustainable development, renewable energy, women’s empowerment among others. It also offers training for defence services in the field of security and strategic studies, defence management, marine and aeronautical engineering, logistics and management, etc. We also depute experts and consultancy services, under the ITEC initiative.
6. Over the last seven decades, we are proud that the ITEC programme has become India’s flagship capacity building and training programme and has trained more than 250 thousand officials from more than 160 countries in more than 100 premier Indian training institutes. I am specially delighted that Mauritius is among our biggest ITEC partners and receives every year, about 200 training slots for Civilian ITEC programmes and 160 slots for Defence ITEC programmes. India has also been deputing technical experts to the National Coast Guard of Mauritius for the last several decades and deputing experts in various fields like blue economy and ICT. For instance, till recently, we had an expert who was working closely with the Disaster Response Force of the Special Mobile Force of Mauritius and assisting the Mauritian government in framing policy guidelines as well as training Mauritian personnel in disaster preparedness, response and relief. This is yet another clear testimony to India’s commitment to assisting its special partner Mauritius, in its holistic development and nation-building process.
7. We are equally pleased that contrary to the donor-recepient model practised by other countries, India’s ITEC assistance has always been based on the needs and interests of our partner countries and is a demand-driven partnership between friends. I believe that this is the reason why our ITEC partnerships are growing stronger by the day and why there is a growing demand for them. More importantly, this is also the reason why India has been able to acquire that intangible yet truly inavaluable gift called ‘trust’ from our partner countries.  Trust – something that cannot be bought or demanded or even quantified; a precious, hard-earned sentiment that takes years to build and like love, one of those unmeasurable things that make life worth living and human cooperation possible. We are grateful for the trust reposed in India by our friends and partners like Mauritius and we know that it is this ineffable element on which our robust edifice of collaboration and partnership will continue to be built, in the coming years. 

Friends,

8. It is this trust that has enabled us to overcome the travel challenges posed by the Covid pandemic and helped us continue our ITEC training programmes and collaboration, using virtual platforms. Our e-ITEC courses in health, e-governance, finance, cultural heritage, environment etc. have become a huge success in the last one and half years and I am delighted to share with you that Mauritius is one of our active participants in the E-ITEC programmes with more than 80 Mauritians having participated virtually during the pandemic. Only last week, we successfully organised an e-ITEC course even in the Defence sector, on the subject ‘Maritime Law and Operations’ and I am happy that two officers from the Mauritius Police Force participated in the programme.
9. In this context, I am particularly happy that for the first time ever, 5 cadet officers, including a women cadet, from the Mauritius Police Force, successfully completed the prestigious Police training course at India’s Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy in Hyderabad and returned to Mauritius just a month ago. We have some of these cadet officers amongst us today and I look forward to hearing about their experiences during the panel discussions. As the first woman High Commissioner of India to Mauritius, allow me to extend a special felicitation to Ms. MARIE GENEVIEVE LOUISE, the first woman cadet from the Mauritius Police Force.

Ladies & Gentlemen,

10. Looking ahead, India is keen to expand ITEC assistance to Mauritius in new areas like skill development and capacity building as part of project implementation. As you are aware, India is an important development partner for Mauritius and is implementing various large scale infrastructure projects. We would be happy to assist Mauritius in project-specific training programmes in order to enhance the skills and expertise of Mauritians for effectively administering and managing the infrastructure after completion.
11. As we prepare to implement projects such as the Civil Services College, Mauritius Disciplined Forces Academy, Forensic Science Laboratory, Solar Power Plant, National Library & Archives, etc, in the coming few months, I suggest that we explore specific training programmes for our Mauritian colleagues from relevant line Ministries and Departments, wherever required, and equip them with requisite skill sets to manage these projects upon completion.
12. This is one idea that we have. We welcome other ideas and suggestions from all of you on how we can further strengthen and enhance the Mauritius-India ITEC partnership. To this end, we are planning to have periodic meetings with our Mauritian ITEC Alumni and friends to seek their comments, feedback and suggestions for improving our ITEC engagement with Mauritius. I believe that such sustained engagement and regular interactions will be mutually beneficial and help us shape our ITEC training programmes to better suit Mauritian needs.

Friends,

13. Before closing, I would like to thank the Hon’ble Minister for his personal guidance and support, the Senior Officials & Staff from the Ministry of Public Services, Administrative and Institutional Reform and Senior Officials & Staff from the Mauritius Police Force for their consistent support and round-the-clock assistance in disseminating information about ITEC training courses to various line Ministries, obtaining nominations for courses and for facilitating their participation. Without your support and cooperation, as I said at the outset, we would not have seen ITEC programmes become the success that they are today. I am confident that with your continued support, our development cooperation will grow and our ITEC capacity building and training programmes will not only contribute to a stronger and more capable Mauritius, but also a stronger India-Mauritius relationship.
14. Before I conclude, I would like to say something that to me personally, is the most important – I believe that our Mauritian ITEC Alumni and extended ITEC family are the best Ambassadors of the time-tested, all-weather Mauritius-India relationship. Ambassadors like me will come and go, but our ITEC friends will remain here forever, as living bridges between our two beautiful countries. On this occasion, I therefore, take the opportunity to convey my heartfelt thanks and the gratitude of the people and the government of India, for being emissaries of our very special and unique partnership.  May your tribe increase and may ITEC bring our two countries and peoples even closer in shared growth, prosperity and well being!

Thank you.

Vive Maurice!

Jai Hind!