As many as 16 eligible British Columbians will receive skills training to prepare for employment as professional truck drivers. The new provincial Community and Employer Partnerships project focuses on training for youth in the West Kootenays.

Minister of Social Development and Poverty Reduction Nicholas Simons said, “Participants who graduate from the program will receive their Class 1 licence, along with the skills and knowledge they need to find rewarding careers in the professional trucking industry in our province.”

The province is providing more than $340,000 to the Mountain Transport Institute to deliver four intakes of its professional Class 1 driver-training program in the West Kootenays.

“Graduates of this training program will receive the mandatory entry-level training (MELT), which has been required for new commercial truck drivers since October 2021,” said Rob Fleming, Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure. “We are helping people become professional drivers, while also making our highways safe.”

Participants will receive 10 weeks of employability and occupational skills training, including certification courses in Workplace Hazardous Material Information Systems (WHMIS) and Level 1 First Aid with CPR, four weeks of on-the-job experience with local employers, and two weeks of follow-up support to prepare participants for their job search.

Full-time, group-based learning for the first intake of the project started Nov. 7. The second intake starts Jan. 3, 2023, the third intake at the end of February, and the fourth intake starts in April. People interested in finding out about this can contact their local WorkBC centre.