Linguistic training program for national minorities close to an end

The linguistic training program for national minorities implemented by the National Association of European Trainers of Moldova (ANTEM) is organizing the last Romanian language courses for civil servants, project coordinator Nadejda Boceagov said at a roundtable meeting on Thursday. The program was launched in 2005. Initially, it was implemented only in southern Moldova, but was later extended to the norther part of the country as well. “The program is designed to help the public servants master the official language, easier integrate into the society and communicate with the people more efficiently. Many of the participants say they attend the courses because they have the possibility of taking part in many seminars and roundtable meetings that are held in Romanian. They need to understand all the information as most of the documents are in Romanian,”said ANTEM director Lucia Cucu. She also said that this year they have received 800 applications for doing free Romanian language courses. 100 of them came from Chisinau. 375 applications have been accepted. Another 200 functionaries took paid courses. From 2005 until 2008, 500 public servants had done free Romanian language courses, while during 2008-2009 - 400.