PR No. 96 “This Government is determined to improve the job opportunities for the youth while simultaneously benefitting the national economy through strengthening the field of Science & Technology.”Rana Tanveer Hussain Islamabad

Rana Tanveer Hussain, Federal Minister for the Science & Technology was addressing the inaugural session of a 3-day Training Workshop being convened with the UNIDO-ECO cooperation in Pakistan. The Federal Minister showed his pleasure over the wide range of participation from the ECO countries. “It is a positive notion to hold such workshops with such level of serious participation” he said.

He appreciated the efforts of the attached organizations who are holding this workshop in cooperation with UNIDO and ECO, which included; PSQCA, PNAC, NPSL and PSCIR. He is of the view that with the increasing national interest in maintain standards and quality of production in our industries, we can improve our exports on greater level. This will not only strengthen our national exchequer but also benefit the over-all trade markets of the ECO member countries in the International market.

It is pertinent to mention here that the third phase of UNIDO-ECO cooperation project “Achieving good governance and sustainability through quality policy formulation in the ECO region” was launched in 2014 for the period of three years. The project is composed of two major outputs: 1. Development of a Regional Quality Policy for the ECO region and; 2. Support to ECO Member States for National Quality Policy formulation by developing a guideline and training capacity for policy elaboration.

Under the output 1, the Regional Quality Policy was developed in consultation with ECO Member States through two high level workshops: 1) UNIDO-ECO High-Level Workshop on the Development of a Regional Quality Policy and Quality Policy Implementation Matrix for the ECO Region, held in Tehran, Iran on 3-4 February 2015 and; 2) UNIDO-ECO Validation Workshop on Draft Regional Quality Policy and Quality Policy Implementation Matrix for the ECO Region, held in Gebze and Anakra on 14-16 September 2015.  In parallel to the Validation Workshop, Workshop Training on Lead Master Trainers was held in Ankara on 17 September 2015.

This workshop is the activity under output 2 and it aims to finalise the draft Guide for the Development of National Quality Policy (NQP Guide), prepared by UNIDO.

The Expert Group Meeting is consisting of two parts:

1. Expert Group Meeting on draft NQP Guide (3-days workshop)
2. Workshop training on NQP Guide. The participating experts, as Lead Master Trainer of the project, are expected to organise a half-day awareness seminar back in their own country within 3 months’ time after the EGM.

The Objective of the Expert Group Meeting (EGM) and the Workshop Training of Lead Master Trainers (LMTs)

The objective of the EGM is:

1. Share the recent experience of NQP development (Pakistan case)
2. Present, discuss and finalise the draft Guide for the Development of National Quality Policies for ECO Countries (NQP Guide)
3. Discuss on the modalities for the formation of quality-related technical network among ECO Member States.

The objectives of the workshop training of LMTs are:

1. LMTs clearly understand the importance and necessity of updating or developing NQP.
2. LMTs clearly understand the major important elements in developing NQP.
3. LMTs clearly understand the contents of NQP Guide for ECO region and ready for sharing their knowledge with other quality-related institutions in their respective country.
4. LMTs clearly understand their task to organise an awareness seminar in their own country within 3 months from the workshop.

Expected outputs:

Expert Group Meeting: Finalised NQP Guide for submission to ECO

Workshop training of Lead Master Trainers:       Model presentation contents and major elements

Each participant is a specialist from QI-related institutions who is appointed in their own country. There are a total of 10 participants for the EGM and Training of Master Trainers, one from each ECO Member State. The expert has an obligation to conduct a NQP awareness seminar within three months from the return to their country. The representative countries participating in the workshop include; Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, South Africa, Japan, Jordan and Pakistan.

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