“Railway Training – best practices” the first webinar organised between the UIC Middle East and UIC Africa regions was held on 5 July 2021.
The moderator of the webinar, Jerzy Wisniewski, FV Director and UIC Middle East Coordinator, welcomed participants from both regions, noting that the webinar would showcase examples of different approaches to training within the regions.
In his opening speech, François Davenne, Director General of UIC, explained that UIC had established successful training programmes focused on its fundamental values, such as safety, security, among others. Nonetheless, it was also important to develop a more active training policy. UIC had recently issued an activity booklet which explained its main technical areas. It was vital to offer training on many of these subjects, including telecommunications, 5G, ticketing and the digital freight platform, to bring UIC members together and promote UIC’s added value. Thanks to the commitment of its members, UIC had also deployed training projects such as Train Rail Hackaton and the project to develop the UIC training offer. He expressed the hope that this first interregional webinar would provide members with new ideas as to how to make use of UIC’s added value.
Further messages of introduction were delivered by Ali Ihsan Uygun, TCDD CEO, who noted the development of training in Turkey and its interregional training with Asia and Africa; he also proposed the creation of a UIC Platform for sharing experiences and boosting interregional experience. Chair of RAME, Mohamed Rabie Khlie, ONCF CEO and Chair of AFRA, underlined the importance of partnership and synergies in the region. Saeid Rasouli, RAI CEO and Vice-Chair of RAME, explained that RAI had organised numerous training courses during the Covid-19 pandemic which were comparable in quality to courses organised prior to the pandemic. He also announced the establishment of five new training centres in Iran.
Various presentations were made: by representatives of the UIC African Regional Office in Rabat on the training models of the UIC African Region; by the Training Department of TCDD on railway training priorities and lessons learnt; and by the DG for Development, Training and Technology of RAI, on training/educational activity and its recent developments.
The guest speakers included a DB Senior Consultant on Training, who talked about the transformation of training courses from in-person to virtual/digital formats during the Covid-19 pandemic; a representative of FS Group International HR Management Unit, who gave a presentation on the international transfer of knowledge and recent developments; ONCF and IFF presented “Training & Bilateral Cooperation: example of ONCF/SNCF”; and the CAMRAIL representative shared the experience of Executive Programme Railways in Cameroun.
UIC expert Nathalie Amirault, UIC Expertise Development Unit manager, presented a new initiative on multiregional training: Train Rail Hackathon, and Meryem Belhaj-Clot, UIC Project Leader on training/educational development, presented the project to develop the UIC training offer.
