Club for foreign staff in Maastricht
The city council of Maastricht wants to set up an international association, where employees from abroad can meet each other. The initiative focuses not so much on staff from large companies, for whom a great deal has already been arranged, but on employees from institutions, including the Universiteit Maastricht’s research institutes, the Japanese private university Teikyo and the Maastricht School of Management.
A council survey showed that Maastricht had 120 institutes (also counting one-man operations) employing foreign staff (a total of a few thousand employees), and that the majority of them were in favour of a club. “They want to make more use of each other’s networks, to avoid having to reinvent the wheel when it comes to practical matters,” says senior policy official Simone van der Steen. “The venue has not been decided on yet, but there are commercial plans to open an international jazz pub, which could serve as a meeting point.”
On 19 May a first gathering has been scheduled on a Stiphout boat. An invitation will be sent this week to all institutes related to the Universiteit Maastricht.
Source: Observant, 30 March 2006
