The 46th Meeting of the ILO/Cinterfor Technical Committee was launched on 19 July at the INFOTEP headquarters in the Dominican Republic.

The event was attended by the Minister of Labour, Luis Miguel de Camps, the Director General of INFOTEP, Rafael Santos Badía, and the Director of Cinterfor, Anne Caroline Posthuma, who announced the holding of the 46th TCM in Punta Cana, from 4 to 6 October 2023, with the Ministry of Labour as the representative of the headquarters and INFOTEP as the host institution.

The TCM is one of the most important events in the field of technical vocational training in Latin America and the Caribbean, bringing together specialists, professionals, representatives of institutions specializing in training and development of human talent, ILO/Cinterfor members, representatives of employers and workers, as well as governments, together with Ministries of Education and Labour.

The 46th ILO/Cinterfor TCM coincides with the institution's 60th anniversary year. In these six decades, the agency has played a key role in strengthening vocational training in the region and in promoting policies and practices that foster human development and decent employment among the members of its network of institutions.

The director of ILO/Cinterfor, mentioned that the meeting will focus on addressing vocational training as the axis of economic and social development of our countries, through a look focused on the major transitions facing our economies, societies and labour markets: digital and sustainable and demographic.

With an agenda that will address key issues in vocational training, such as adaptation to technological change; inclusion of vulnerable groups; lifelong learning; dual training and social dialogue, among others. It will be a specialised and tripartite international event, with spaces for fluid, dynamic and open exchange and the updating of the conceptual and strategic framework necessary to address vocational training.

"Here will be born the line in which the professional technical institutes will move from the coming months and years; so the country is very excited because we can bring a strategy to the world," said Santos Badía, director general of INFOTEP.

The Minister of Labour, Luis Miguel de Camps, spoke about the impact, importance and scope of the 46th Meeting of the ILO/Cinterfor Technical Committee (TCM) for the region, and particularly for the Dominican Republic. On the role of INFOTEP in the training of human talent, he said that skills training is increasingly important for the Dominican worker to have the workforce with the knowledge that regional and global markets demand, thus contributing to economic growth and above all to human development.

"It is important to make it known that the challenges of the gap in the skills demanded by the labour market and the skills produced by the training systems are not exclusive to the Dominican Republic, because national markets are global," said De Camps.