Thiruvananthapuram: Chief Minister, Shri Pinarayi Vijayan has inaugurated the own building of the Goethe-Zentrum in the capital city to house Germany’s language centre and the office of the Honorary Consul. The new centre is located at Jawahar Nagar.
Speaking on the occasion, Shri Vijayan said the relationship between Kerala and Germany dated back to the 19th century with the arrival of the Basel Mission in Kozhikode. It has contributed significantly to the progress of Malabar in the areas of education, industry and social transformation.
The Chief Minister said with the signing of the Triple Win Agreement between India and the German Federal Employment Agency in December 2021 to recruit 1,500 nurses from Kerala, Goethe-Zentrum, which was set up in Trivandrum and later in Kochi, became the official partner to provide German language training to these candidates.
He expressed happiness that 30,000 candidates wrote the Goethe-Certificate examinations at both these centres in Kerala. Thus, Kerala has become the pioneer in India to partner directly with Germany for fair and ethically correct migration of human resources.
H E Achim Burkart, German Consul General & Regional Director of the Goethe-Institut (South Asia); Dr Shashi Tharoor, MP; Kerala Chief Secretary, Dr Venu V; Dr Marla Stukenberg, Chief South Asia Region Director of the Goethe-Institut, and Dr Syed Ibrahim, Honorary Consul & Director of Goethe Zentrum, Trivandrum & Kochi, were among those who attended the inaugural ceremony.
Part of the worldwide network of Goethe-Institut, the official language and cultural institute of Germany, the Zentrum has been functioning in the city for fifteen years now. The Indo-German Language and Cultural Society manages it under the Chairmanship of former Kerala Planning Board Member, G Vijaya Raghavan.
The centre provides consular assistance to hundreds of people migrating to Germany, including language training and certifying signatures and copies of documents. Starting with roughly 400 students in Kerala, it now enrols more than 5,600 students yearly, helping them learn German and write the Goethe-Certificate exams.
Designed and executed with utmost care for environmental consciousness, the state-of-the-art premises present an unmatched experience for the visitors and the students. The eight classrooms have the most modern technological features to conduct German classes more efficiently and in quality.
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