The governments of Timor-Leste and the United States signed on Tuesday the largest cooperation agreement in history, valued at 420 million dollars (410 million euros), focused on improving Dili’s infrastructure, among other initiatives.
With a five-year implementation, the agreement was signed by the Minister of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, Fidelis Magalhães, and by the Vice President of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), Cameron Alford, in a ceremony in Dili.
The Timor-Leste Pact comprises two projects, one for improve water and sanitation conditionsproviding drinking water to 429,000 residents in Dili and 64,000 in nearby areas.
The other refers to the creation of a center of excellence for the training of teachers and educational leadersknown as TALENT, aimed especially at the secondary education sector.
“With the world responding to a growing list of challenges, including a global environmental crisis, water security is more important than ever,” Alford said at the ceremony.
The Timor-Leste Pact will reinforce water security, ensuring that there is safe and clean water for residents of the capital and nearby areas, improving education in all secondary schools in the country”, he stressed.
On the same occasion, the Timorese Prime Minister, Taur Matan Ruak, said that the Compact Agreement for Water, Sanitation, Drainage and Education has a global value of 484 million dollars (473 million euros), with the Timorese Government to contribute 64 million dollars (62.5 million euros), in It is “the largest investment” made in the country by a development partner individually.
The agreement became prepared in 2010“with the first support given to the fight against corruption and to reinforce the efforts of the national vaccination program” and that “it has been developing in the last 12 years after an intense process of consolidation and implementation of demanding conditions and negotiation criteria ”.
For the implementation of the project, he said, several detailed preliminary and feasibility studies were carried out, which allowed the agreement to be implemented in the defined programs.
The compact, he said, puts the citizen “at the center of government action”providing “the infrastructure and educational resources necessary for the acquisition of new knowledge, for scientific qualification and for the mastery of technologies” for Timorese citizens.
Special emphasis, he said, will be given to teacher training, “to achieve an increasingly attractive, inclusive, quality education, in accordance with best practices and international examples” and, on the other hand, “facilitate access to a system of technologically modern, clean and safe drinking water.
The TALENT project will work with the Government of Timor-Leste to establish a Center of Excellence and ensure that all high school graduates have the necessary skills to pursue higher education and enter the workforce, benefiting nearly one million students East Timorese for the next 20 years. ”, says a note from the two governments.
Source: Observadora
