THE European Union has allocated €1.5million (about US$1.8
million) to Myanmar for health care and other projects which it
says will benefit a quarter of a million people.
The allocation, approved on June 9 by the European Commission,
the EU’s executive branch, would be the first of several
to Myanmar planned for this year by the Brussels-based organisation,
the commission said in a June 16 media statement.
The allocation will be channeled through UN agencies and non-government
organisations by the European Community Humanitarian Office (ECHO)
and follows an EU announcement in May that it would provide between
€30 to €35 million in humanitarian aid to Myanmar this
year, up from €19 million in 2004.
“Humanitarian aid must be provided where it is most needed,
and regardless of the political situation in a country,”
an EU commissioner, Mr Michel Louis, was quoted as saying in the
statement.
The allocation will be used for a range of health care and other
projects. They include providing basic care through mobile clinics
which pay special attention to malaria, tuberculosis, diarrhoea
and mother and child care, improving water and sanitation, an
education programs on health care and hygiene for students at
some schools in Yangon.
Funds would also be provided to four orphanages to buy food and
clothing and for health care training, the statement said.
It said some of the funds would also go to the United Nations
refugee agency, UNHCR, to assist those repatriated from Bangladesh
in the past few years.
“School enrollment will be facilitated for the children
among them (returnees) and literacy classes organised for adults
and adolescents,” the statement said.
It was not known last week which organisations and agencies,
apart from UNHCR, would receive funding under the latest EU allocation.
An official at ECHO’s Bangkok office told Myanmar Times
on June 17 that it was not possible to provide further details
because the office was finalising contracts with the agencies
concerned.
“Until this is done we do not publish their names or contract
amounts,” an ECHO spokesperson, Mr Heinke Viet, said in
an email message.
