Politics

President Ghani Praises De-Miners

Saturday, April 04, 2015
Kabul (BNA) Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in a message issued on the occasion of ‘World Demining Day’ praised those devoted youths engaged in defusing mines for the safety of their people and some of them have been even disabled and martyred on this path.
According to statistic, 973 de-miners have been disabled and 189 others martyred in the past few decades during Islamic and national duty of demining.
In the message, President Ghani asked the ministry of education to name one, one school as the name of each servant martyred so that their sacrifices could be honored and next generations could better know their servants honor.
President Ghani also instructed the Kabul Municipality to nominate a street as ‘demining street’ to honor the country’s de-miners.
In the past few years, 15000 people were engaged in defusing and clearing mines in Afghanistan, but currently most of them have been sacked due to lack of financial budget, President Ghani said in the message.
“I spoke Tuesday to representatives of demining organizations and a number of UN experts related to a range of demining-related problems.
Since 2011, budget has been cut down for defusing and clearing mines in the country, which is an issue in this regard.     
Although most Afghans have been engaged in defusing mines in the country for a few decades, financial budget is managed by UN and a number of foreign de-miners are working in Afghanistan despite that Afghans have enough capability and experience in demining affairs.
I have shared the issue with UN and they asked two weeks to prepare a program in which the management of financial affairs is handed over from foreigners to Afghans and the UN only plays advising role.
We should make a coordinated and organized program for current budget and possibilities in which priorities are clarified and quality and price are to be reduced,” President Ghani said.
In the message, President called on those planting mines in roads, villages, agricultural fields and other places not to change the soil of this land to a dangerous place for the country’s people. “Leave farmers to work on their fields without any danger and leave passengers reach their destination without any concerns”.
Thousands Afghans have been killed and disabled because of mines in the country during the past few decades. This misfortunate phases should be stopped and we should save the rest of the country’s 10% soil from mines with the help of our de-miners.
At the end, I’m praising Canada for taking huge steps towards preparing and approving anti-mine agreement. I hope the agreement to be implemented by all countries in particular our country,” President Ghani added in the message.

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