Environment day celebrated in Ibb [Archives:2002/26/Health]
BY IBRAHIM ADDAHAN
IBB YEMEN TIMES CORRESPONDENT
The environment is our surroundings in which we have intimate contact. The environment suffers from pollution caused by car exhaust, rubbish, chemicals, sewage and other by-products of our consumption. Noise pollution from car horns, motorcycles, loudspeakers and factories also greatly effect our well being.
To address this problem, the Governorate of Ibb celebrated the International Day for the Environment on 5 June, 2002. A number of speakers spoke about the effects of pollution on man and the environment.
Representative of the German Embassy, Mr. Najel, delivered a speech on this occasion outlining the Yemeni-German effort.
Just one week ago, we concluded the bilateral government negotiations on the Yemeni-German development cooperation for the year 2002. Our government was very proud and delighted to increase our commitment this year by 67%. In 2002, we will allocate 37,5 M Euro towards the development of Yemen Mr. Najel said.
The Yemen-German development cooperation focuses on four sectors: health, basic education, water sanitation and income generating projects. The basic education sector gives a very good example of how we integrate environmental awareness into development. The title to the education project is, health and environmental education in primary schools. The project aims to provide health and environmental awareness for the pupils, teacher and parents in primary schools in Ibb and Abyan. All shall work together to achieve and maintain schools with healthy and environmentally good conditions. The project not only includes the improvement and equipping of schools, it also conducts training courses for teachers in order to enable them to better transfer knowledge to the pupils, Mr. Najel added.
Mr. Najel was asked why he was confined to supporting small projects and not larger projects.
His response was, The decisions come from the Minister of Planning and Development. If you want to have larger German projects, you have to convince the Minister of Planning & Development. For us as German representatives, we can only support projects up to $70,200.
The most important thing for Yemen is to plant trees on the mountains, especially in Ibb. If we had a lot of trees on the mountains we would not have these problems that we do now. Many people die as houses give way to erosion and land slides. We have to work as one group to clean our environment to avoid the problems of destruction and disease, Mrs. Toky said.
The secretary of Ibb Governorate, Ameen al-Warafi, asserted efforts would be made to help overcome the pollution of the environment. He thanked the Yemeni-German effort to clean Ibb and Mrs. Toky for her great efforts in development. He also supported the idea of using cotton bags instead of plastic.
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