Noumea, New Caledonia, 29 November, 2011. A first for the Pacific technical training on Labour Statistics and Labour Market Information & Analysis (LMIA) in the Pacific was opened yesterday (28/11/11) by the Deputy Secretary General of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), Mr Richard Mann and ILO Director for the Pacific Island Countries, Mr David Lamotte. Targeting national staff from the Ministry of Labour, National Statistics Office and Provident Fund, this ILO-SPC collaboration brings together participants from 9 ILO member States: Fiji, Kiribati, Samoa, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Republic of Marshall Islands, Vanuatu and Timor Leste.

The course is tailor-made for the Pacific on labour statistics and LMIA, and was developed by the ILO Department of Statistics with the support of ILO Offices in Bangkok and Suva, in close consultation with SPC’s Statistics for Development Programme. It’s development is based on a capacity-building needs assessment and is a outputs-oriented, participatory workshop that combines theoretical presentations, and group and country-specific practical work. International and national specialists, other experts and practitioners will lead the presentations and group practical exercises involving on-going country-level questionnaire design work and data analysis of survey results, which participants have brought to the training course.