Japan provides aid for mine clearance

KABUL for humanitarian mine clearance operations in northern and central regions of the country.

HALO Country Director Dr. Farid Homayoun and Ambassador of Japan Hiroshi Takahashi signed an agreement to the effect.

The funding through the Grant Assistance for Grassroots Projects will allow HALO to continue employing 108 trained deminers and to deploy four manual mine clearance teams for priority tasks.

A statement from the Embassy of Japan said the four 27-man teams would focus on 24 selected minefields in Takhar, Baghlan and Parwan provinces, where they would clear 758,403sqm metres of contaminated land.

“This project aims to provide a large number of young Afghans in rural communities with continuing honorable employment opportunities as de-miners,” said Ambassador Takahashi.

He hoped hope their work would help mitigate the risk of mines and ERW. Such projects contributed to the peace and stability of Afghanistan, he added.

Japan has been assisting Afghanistan’s nation-building efforts in various fields, including infrastructure, security, health.

The cumulative Japanese assistance to Afghanistan amounts to around $5.4 billion since 2001. In the demining sector, Japan has supported 61 projects with id=”mce_marker”22 million.

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