URUMQI, Nov. 21 -- China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region plans to train 16,500 teachers to teach in the local dialect and Mandarin.

Deputy head of Xinjiang education department, Ma Wenhua, said on Thursday that 254 million yuan (41.48 million U.S. dollars) would be channeled into the project from 2013 to 2018, in an effort to make up for the shortage of the bilingual teachers in the region.

The initiative will target ethnic minority teachers under the age of 35, he said.

Xinjiang local government has invested heavily across the board in bilingual education.

By the end of last year, 21,800 ethnic minority teachers in the region had received government-funded bilingual training.

The local government aims to enroll about 75 percent of ethnic minority students in bilingual education by 2015 and more than 90 percent by 2020.