On May 02-05, 2018 a yearly Regional Workshop for consortia of border guarding and customs training institutions of Central Asian countries was held in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. The representatives of the training institutions from all five Central Asian countries gathered to share their experience and ideas on the capacity building activities in the educational processes.
BOMCA historically has been attaching a great importance to an effective institutional partnership and dynamic collaborative process between CA and EU training institutions of border security-related agencies. To this effect, CA Customs and BG training institutions Consortia were launched by initiative of BOMCA Programme in 2011 as a forum for the joint approach and cooperation towards the development of the harmonized and efficient training system for Central Asia Customs and BG staff. BOMCA 9 continues to support this initiative by promoting and facilitating continued exchange of professional experience in the educational process and professional development of border and customs agency personnel.
On a yearly basis Regional Workshops for consortia of border guarding and customs training institutions of Central Asian countries are organized. The Consortium of Training Institutions remains an effective platform to exchange information about good practices, to map common needs and jointly explore solutions to address them, taking into account available resources and diverse experiences of CA countries.
Based on jointly defined list of topic for exchange of trainers, a pilot exchange of trainers with BOMCA 9 support was successfully conducted in Dushanbe between 29 May-1 June 2017, where trainers from the customs training centers of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan facilitated training of trainers for their Tajik colleagues on the issues of radiation control and dual-use goods. 15 teachers and instructors from the Tajik customs training center learned methodology of teaching how to carry out radiation control and prevent illegal movement of radiation materials, how to use special equipment while checking cargo at different checkpoints - airports, railway stations and border crossing points.
As a next step in exchange of trainers’ experience, the Higher Military Customs Institute of the Republic of Uzbekistan demonstrated best practices in X-ray image analysis by hosting between 13-15 June, 2017 a regional training for trainers and customs officers from Central Asia. During the training experts presented a number of recommendations for trainers and examples of practical exercises that can be used in further training of customs officers. Thus, the trained trainers from CA countries are able now to train customs officers in their countries in X-ray analysis skills when checking cargo at customs checkpoints.
In 2018 the exchange of trainers was successfully continued by Kazakhstan - on February 13-15 trainers from Border Guard Academy of Kazakhstan came to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan and conducted ToT for their Kyrgyz colleagues - 15 teachers of BG Training Center and Military Institute were trained on teaching methodology on the topic of traveller’s identification and profiling.