THE High Commission of India in Guyana, this month, has re-started accepting applications for on-site training in India, under the Indian Technical and Economic Co-operation (ITEC) programme after a stoppage due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to a release, ITEC is Government of India’s flagship programme instituted on 15th September 1964. It is aimed at sharing India’s own development experiences with fellow developing countries on the basis of partnership and co-operation for mutual benefit.

So far, the release noted that more than 200,000 alumni across the world and over 650 Guyanese have undergone training under this programme.

ITEC is for enhancing skills and capacity-building for Guyanese and for deputation of ITEC experts and technical assistance in various sectors.

On May 12, 2022, the first batch of five officers from the Guyana Police Force, under ITEC 2022, left for training at the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) for a four-week training course in specialised training programme in Cyber Security and Malware Analytics, Reverse Engineering from May 16, 2022 to June 10, 2022, which is geared to improve the capabilities of the Guyana Police Force to fight cybercrime.

The team comprises five Guyana Police Force Officers and marks the beginning of training of Guyana Police Force Officers in India under ITEC.

Established in 1988, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) is a premier Research and Development (R&D) organisation of the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) for carrying out R&D in Information Technology (IT), Electronics and associated areas.

C-DAC has today emerged as a premier third-party R&D organisation in Information Technologies and Electronics (IT&E) in the country working on strengthening national technological capabilities in the context of global developments in the field and responding to change in the market-need in selected foundation areas.

The release noted that as an institution for high-end R&D, C-DAC has been at the forefront of IT revolution, constantly building capacities in emerging/enabling technologies and innovating and leveraging its expertise, caliber, skillsets to develop and deploy IT products and solutions for different sectors of the economy. C-DAC was also instrumental in establishing the Centre for Excellence in IT for Government of Guyana located at the University of Guyana premises at a cost of about US$2 million to train Guyanese nationals.

“It may be recalled here that the Guyana Defence Force are currently sending their officers to India for various training courses. 19 training slots for the year 2021-22 were allotted, out of which three officers from Guyana Defence Sorce are currently in India to complete their courses while 10 officers have returned to Guyana after completing their courses with the Indian Armed Forces. In continuation of this partnership with Guyana, Government of India has further allocated 28 slots for Guyana’s Army Wing & 10 slots for Coast Guard of Guyana Defence Force for the year 2022-23.  India and Guyana continue to collaborate on the cultural and educational fronts with over 50 ITEC scholarships; nine ICCR Commonwealth scholarships for Under-Graduate/Post-Graduate and Phd. courses in India; five scholarships for learning Indian culture, dance and music etc. along with upcoming “Know India Programme” scholarships for Guyanese youth and elderly,” the release noted.

All these scholarships are completely funded by the Government of India. Over 4,650 Guyanese are currently studying in Indian universities such as the Indira Gandhi Open University (IGNOU) and Jain University, under the Government of Guyana-funded GOAL Scholarship scheme.