Dutch minister to visit Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Monday, 02 January 2006, 12:33 GMT]
Mrs van der Hoeven, Netherlands Minister of Education, Culture and Science, is scheduled to visit Sri Lanka from 8-10 January to support projects in education and cultural-corpoeration in tsunami affected areas, said a press release from the Royal Netherlands Embassy issued Monday. Her visits are confined to the South, to Rathgama and Galle Fort, according to the release.

Full text of the press release follows:

Netherlands Minister of Education, Culture and Science, Mrs van der Hoeven, will be visiting Sri Lanka from 8-10 January as part of a tour to Sri Lanka and Indonesia. She will be received by Sri Lankan Minister of Education, Hon. Mr Susil Premajayantha.

The purpose of her visit is to support the endeavours in the field of education and cultural co-operation in tsunami affected areas. In this respect she will visit a UNICEF school reconstruction project in Rathgama and an After School Child Centre. A visit to mutual heritage projects in Galle Fort is also scheduled.

School children in the Netherlands contributed EUR 1.8 million to UNICEF funds to reconstruct schools for tsunami affected children in Sri Lanka and Indonesia. This was initiated by Zappelin TV, a Dutch broadcasting channel for primary schools. Zappelin TV will accompany the minister during her trip and will cover the visit to the UNICEF reconstruction school project.

The government of the Netherlands contributed EUR 24 million in 2005 to Post Tsunami reconstruction programmes and projects. Out of this contribution EUR 1.5 million was allocated to UNICEF for the restoration of basic education.

External Links:

NL:

M.J.A. van der Hoeven