Rustam Minnikhanov: We will look up to the UAE when organizing WorldSkills Championship
On October 19, during his working visit to the United Arab Emirates, Tatarstan President Rustam Minnikhanov had a meeting with President of WorldSkills International Simon Bartley, Chief Executive Officer of WorldSkills International David Hoey, President of WorldSkills Abu Dhabi 2017 Mubarak Al Shamsi and Chief Executive Office of WorldSkills Abu Dhabi 2017 Ali Al Marzouqi. Director General of the Union “Young Professionals (WorldSkills Russia)” Robert Urazov and Director General of Rusatom State Atomic Energy Corporation Alexey Likhachev also took part in the meeting.
During the meeting, the sides exchanged their impressions after another day of competitions. Minnikhanov once again noted the high level of preparation of the world championship of vocational skills and shared his positive impressions of what he saw.
Mubarak Al Shamsi expressed his gratitude for the high appreciation of the work of the organizing committee and emphasized: "Today we have seen your personal interest in the competition. You took pictures with your phone all the time, asking us tricky questions and paying attention to even small and seemingly insignificant details. This gives confidence that the championship will be held at the highest level in Kazan.”
"We did much work when preparing for the WorldSkills Championship in the UAE. After all, every detail matters here. Our colleagues from WorldSkills International helped us a lot," he addressed Simon Bartley and David Hoey and continued: "We should keep in mind that the number of participating countries, vocational skills and so on is growing from event to event. Several thousand participants and experts from almost 80 countries have arrived in Abu Dhabi. Competitions are covered by 750 representatives of various mass media agencies from around the world. It requires the coordinated work of all services. As a result, over 105,000 spectators, including 35,000 students and pupils have attended the championship during the last four days of the competition,” Al Shamsi said.
"We all are promoting the prestige of blue-collar jobs. This is very important in the modern world. In Russia, much work is being done not only to popularize blue-collar jobs, but to bring them to the best world standards, which is no less important for us. Simon and David are our old friends and the main advisors in organizing the WorldSkills Championship in Kazan. The Russian government is always open to us and provides overall support in solving organizational issues. We cannot help but to correspond to the highest world level. We will look up to the UAE when organizing the WorldSkills Championship,” Minnikhanov summed the meeting and invited colleagues from the UAE to visit Tatarstan.