DOTr, JICA approve curriculum for PH Railway Institute

FILE: Officials from the Department of Transportation and the Japan International Cooperation Agency hold their copies of the approved curriculum of the Philippine Railway Institute. (Photo: Department of Transportation – Philippines/Facebook)

MANILA — The curriculum for the courses to be offered at the Philippine Railway Institute (PRI), the country’s first railway training institution, has been approved as it prepares for its partial operations in October this year.

“The PRI will offer nine certificate and licensing courses, spanning all specialized disciplines in railway operations and maintenance,” the Department of Transportation (DOTr) said in a statement on Friday.

The PRI staff and instructors will undergo a series of trainings at the Tokyo Metro Training Center in Japan, at no cost to the government since it is fully funded by a Japanese grant.

“We will work hard to make sure the PRI is put into place. Aside from the skills and talent, we want our railways personnel to have the proper psyche and culture of discipline for the job,” Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade said.

The curriculum was approved during a meeting of DOTr and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) officials after the groundbreaking of the Metro Manila Subway System last Wednesday.

The institute, funded by a 690 million yen grant from the Japanese government, aims to become the primary policy-making, planning, implementing, regulating, and administrative agency on human resource development in the Philippine railway sector.

The governments of the Philippines and Japan have signed an agreement on providing a grant of 1.2 billion Japanese yen for a full-size dynamic train simulator and 30 stationary train simulators last February 21 at the sidelines of the 7th Philippines-Japan High Level Joint Committee Meeting in Osaka.

Other training facilities that will be used by the PRI include a 900-meter training track and mock-ups of tunnel, station, bridge, signaling, communications, and power equipment.

Full operations of the PRI are scheduled in 2021 after completion of its 20,000 square meter building at a four-hectare site at the Metro Manila Subway depot in Valenzuela City.

The DOTr targets to build 1,900 kilometers of railroad tracks by the end of the Duterte administration in 2022 from the current 77 kilometers of operational railways.