Japan grants US$29.6m for three projects The government of Japan has injected more than 237.4 billion kip (US$29.6 million) to fund three projects to accelerate growth and Laos efforts to attain the Millennium Development Goals. Ms Sisomboun Ounavong ( right ) and Mr Koichi Takei shake hands after signing the agreement. A signing ceremony for the grant agreement took place yesterday at the Ministry of Planning and Investment. Chief Representative of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Laos, Mr Koichi Takei, and Director General of the ministrys Department of International Cooperation, Ms Sisomboun Ounavong, signed the agreement. The three projects are Improving the Secondary School Environment (ISSE) in the Southern Provinces, Improvement of Equipment and Facilities on Meteorological and Hydrological Services (IEFMHS), and Improvement of Solid Waste Management in Environmentally Sustainable Cities (ISWMESC). The US$10.4 million ISSE aims to improve the learning environment and provide greater access to lower secondary education in Attapeu, Saravan and Xekong provinces. Support for this project came about when JICA learnt that most people in these provinces were in the lowest income bracket and that mountainous regions were also a barrier to education access, JICA said in a press release. “Although access to primary education in Laos has greatly improved and is marked with a 96.8 percent net enrollment rate in 2012/2013, access to lower secondary education is still limited,” JICA said in the press release. In the southern provinces of Attapeu, Saravan and Xekong, the enrollment rates for lower secondary education in 2012/2013 were 52.5, 44.9 and 57.4 percent respectively, all of which are below the national average of 69 percent. “It is both urgent and necessary to improve lower secondary education in these provinces,” JICA stated. The ISSE project will be implemented in 45 schools. Some 10,000 students and hundreds of teachers will benefit from 235 new classrooms, 36 teacher rooms, 3 dormitories, 36 toilets and 37 storage units. The US$13.5 million ISWMESC project aims to improve the urban environment and sanitation through the enhancement of efficiency in collecting and transferring waste. The project covers Vientiane and Luang Prabang and Xayaboury provinces as they are part of the Asean environmentally sustainable cities network. For this project a transfer station will be constructed in Vientiane and equipment for waste collection systems such as compactor trucks, dump trucks and skip loaders will be provided. The project will help these urban areas to handle the growing volume of waste in accordance with population growth in urban areas of Laos. The US$5.7 million IEFMH S project aims to reduce the damage caused by meteorological and hydrological disasters in Laos with more accurate hazardous weather information. The project will cover Vientiane and 16 provinces by providing equipment and facilities for meteorological and hydrological observation. Eighteen automatic weather observation systems and four water leve l systems will be installed. JICA said these upgrades will allow Laos to transmit and receive data from the World Meteorological Organisation, improving the regional and global information that is integral to weather forecasts and warnings.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 21:40:22 +0000
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