Bucharest, 1^st of October 2009 – The National Center for Railway Qualification and Training – CENAFER, in partnership with SIVECO Romania launched yesterday the project "Training of trainers, a need to align with EU standards for Railway training".

The project is co-funded by the European Social Fund under the financing contract POSDRU 57/1.3/S/38654 concluded with the Ministry of Labour, Family and Social Protection, General Directorate Management Authority for the Operational Sectorial Programme "Human Resources Development, project selected within the Operational Sectorial Program “Human Resources Development", 2007-2013.

The total project sum 9,707,804 RON, of which financial assistance grant is 9,290,796 RON. The project is implemented at national level in the 8 regions of development, for a period of 36 months.

The project's objective is to develop further training of trainers in the Railway sector, by delivering them training programs. In the long term, implementation of the project will increase the quality of training programs for the Railway’s employees. This fact will have two major effects: higher quality of rail services and therefore increasing the client s’ satisfaction (passengers, carriers), and alignment of the Romanian railway services to those offered by other European state members.

"We face a possible decrease in traffic and administrative personnel, and those who remain in the system should be better prepared. We want to prepare employees to manage any issue in a professional way",said Claudiu Dumitrescu, Director of Railway Infrastructure Department, within the Ministry of Transport.

"Funds for the project were not attracted to the detriment of infrastructure development that comes from the Operational Sectorial Program for Transport. The project will increase the quality of the services delivered by our employees, thus getting better results", added Dumitrescu.

"The project aims to identify the trainers in the Railway needs for training, in an innovative and effective way, by conducting a needs analysis for training and developing and implementing a training system based on ICT (blended learning through eLearning portal), improving knowledge and skills in trainers and their certification by implementing training programs, acquisition and dissemination of good practice in trainers training by setting meetings and workshops with international participation and creating information brochures", said Marius Serban, Director General of CENAFER.

SIVECO Romania will provide support for these courses through eLearning platform.