Update:January 8, 2010

JICA-Commissioned Training Course Completed for Administrative Officials from Central Asian Countries on Water-Quality Monitoring for Effective Use of Water Resources

A Training Course for Administrative Officials from Central Asian Countries on Water-Quality Monitoring for Effective Use of Water Resources, which was commissioned by JICA, was completed on December 11 (Fri).
ICETT received seven trainees from Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan for this 39-day course, and they were eagerly engaged in water-quality monitoring training at such sites as ICETT and Tottori University.
We would like to express our gratitude to all the parties involved in the course, such as the lecturers who came all the way to ICETT.
During the trainees’ stay, their training activities were carried out in relatively good weather, although it often rained heavily for this time of year. There were some impressions of Japan’s weather that they described. A Kazakhstani trainee felt that winter in Japan is rather warm, because her country turns into an extremely cold land this time of year. There was also a Turkmenian trainee, whose country is mostly covered by deserts, saying that this was his first time to experience all-day rain. Besides, a trainee learned that the Japanese live long because water is clean and tastes quite good in Japan.
For a period of over a month, while learning the climate and geographical features of Japan at their visits to various sites, the trainees attended lectures and went through substantial training activities to learn about the meticulous environmental management system in Japan, the consideration for places to which used water is discharged, and what water-quality monitoring with high accuracy should be. Because of these experiences, we are confident that they fully understood the significance of our training courses.
To our delight, all the trainees had already become good friends of Japan by the time they went home. (Minamikawa)