Jakarta, Aug. 19 -- Jakarta Governor Pramono Anung Wibowo has urged offering foreign language courses, particularly Japanese, Arabic, and Mandarin, to Jakarta residents in a bid to strengthen their competitiveness and appeal in the overseas job market.

"Our workers are essentially tough and of good quality. However, the lack of foreign language proficiency among many of them often becomes a significant stumbling block," he remarked in East Jakarta on Tuesday.

Bearing that in mind, he instructed Head of the Jakarta Manpower, Transmigration, and Energy Office, Syaripudin, to prepare and deploy vehicles that will provide mobile training services. These units will include courses of languages believed to be in high demand abroad.

The gover...