Indonesian-German Collaboration To Improve the Vocational Education

JAKARTA: As a follow up to the collaboration between Indonesia and Germany in the vocational education, German Minister of Economy and Energy Peter Altmaier accompanied
by the Minister of Industry of the Republic of Indonesia today (1/11) visited the offices of PT Astra International Tbk and Astra Manufacturing Polytechnic.

The visit was to see the results of vocational education collaboration through EKONID (Indonesian-German Economic Association).

President Director of PT Astra International Tbk, Prijono Sugiarto, who also the Chairman of EKONID, welcomed the arrival of the two ministers. “German and Indonesian relations are strong and positive in many sectors. With Astra, it isn’t only about trade and business, as we need to learn more from the German vocational education program. Hopefully we can continue the collaboration to educate highly competitive young people.” said Prijono.

In April 2016, President of the Republic of Indonesia Joko Widodo visited Germany to observe the vocational education, as Germany is one of the world best reference countries for vocational education. During the visit, President Joko Widodo met with two Astra Manufacturing Polytechnic instructors, Elroy Fransiskus and Marco Adribrata, accompanied by Astra President Director Prijono Sugiarto. These two instructors had been studying in Germany for 1 year to earn Meister certification in the Automotive Care at the Alfons Kern Schule (AKS) in Pforzheim, Germany.

Astra established the Astra Bina Ilmu Foundation (YABI) in 1995 to organized the Astra Manufacturing Polytechnic as a vocational higher education institution for technology.

Astra Manufacturing Polytechnic has managed to mentoring the two instructors who won Meister certification from Germany in 2017 and in 2018 there were 16 students won DIHK (Deutsche Industrie und Handelskammer) certification in the Automotive Mechatronics as a result of collaboration with AHK-EKONID.

For the last 5 years, about 60% Polman Astra graduates working on Astra Group. This is one of the way to support the government programs by doing link and match between industrial need and vocational high education.

Astra believes that with high-quality human resources, Indonesia will have a brighter future. Recently, Astra Manufacturing Polytechnic build a new campus on a 5 hectare land in the Cikarang, West Java, as a place to educate the technology to the nation young people.