Amman, February 2, 2010- Zain, part of the Zain Group, the leading mobile operator in the Middle East and Africa, held a graduation ceremony for the fourth batch of its Mobile Maintenance Centre students.

Sixteen graduates were handed their certificates, bringing the overall number of trainees who graduated from the Centre since its establishment a year and a half ago to 60. The graduates obtained the first specialized certificates granted in the Kingdom in this field, giving the certificate holders priority to enter the labour market by providing them with the required skills and expertise needed to qualify them for this profession.

Zain CEO Dr. Abdul Malik Al-Jaber, said that the company is keen on developing the local communications sector as well as contributing more effectively to local development. The set up of the first mobile maintenance center is in line with the company’s aim to achieve both objectives. Today mobile communications services became an essential necessity for more than 101% of the population. This creates a growing need for cell phone maintenance services whilst creating new job opportunities for the youth.

Zain’s mobile maintenance center is one of the initiatives announced after His Majesty King Abdullah II visit to the Company’s headquarters to emphasis the leading role played by Zain in the field of community service. Zain launched the Centre in May 2008 within the Vocational Training Corporation located in Zarqa, furnishing it and providing equipment of high standards. It also provides the centre with all that is needed to ensure training with high efficiency.

Al-Jaber added that Zain’s strategy focuses mainly on the partnership with the public sector in the face of the major challenges facing the national economy, namely, poverty and unemployment. He added that the new center offers training and rehabilitation necessary to lift workers’ competencies, capacities and productivity, which is in line with his HM King Abdullah’s directives which focus on the rehabilitation of human resources.

On his part, the Director-General of the Institution of Vocational Training, Majed Habashneh, said that this operator is the embodiment of real cooperation between the Foundation and the private sector, confirming the Foundation’s keenness to provide appropriate training programs, and to unify efforts with the private sector to come up with effective and appropriate training plans that meet the needs of the labour market. This includes the development of skills and Jordanian performance to enable them to acquire the necessary professional skills associated with the labour market, which would contribute to advancing the development and providing job opportunities for youth, commiserating with the needs of the labour market.

Al-Habashneh also referred to the Foundation’s implementation of a development plan to improve its performance and the quality of programs and increase competitiveness and access interdependence required to meet the requirements of the local and regional labour market, within the development plan and reform of a comprehensive restructuring in cooperation with the World Bank and the European Union.

The training workshop, which spanned three months, included both theory and practice, which will be the basis of building professional skills that qualify graduates to engage in the profession once they graduated. The Centre has additionally developed a special curriculum and held training workshops for the instructors to train the students.