Aussie News - Issue 23 - December 2006
Madagascar News
Our most recent edition to the embassy
Madagascar Warden community,
Jules Leclezio, (on right) with Peter Wood
(centre) and another member of the
Madagascar Resources team (left).
With the current election process unfolding in Madagascar, we continue to maintain a busy program in-country activities. Our recently announced Aid supplementation to the Indian Ocean Region, including Madagascar, through the AusAID Small Grants Scheme (SAS), offers us a significant potential boost to our development program in Madagascar. We look forward to working with local partners to finalise some successful SAS projects (see separate item on SAS).
On the Consular side, we are delighted to appoint another Consular Warden for Madagascar to our Embassy community. Our new appointee is Mr Jules Leclezio, who commenced as warden in October 2006. Jules, along with Helen Crowley and Geoff Gorrie, our other two wardens in Madagascar, provide us a very useful local window on events in Madagascar, as well as being a useful reference point in the event that a consular event occurs. Peter Cantwell, Consul and Senior Administrative Officer at the Embassy, undertook a familiarization visit to Antananarivo from 28-30 November 2006, and used that opportunity to meet up with the Wardens as well as making calls on the U.S Embassy (our partner Embassy in the event that a major consular emergency occurs) as well as representatives from the Government.
We continue to develop our Direct Aid Program in Madagascar. Ian McConville and family inaugurated two DAP projects at Tulear Hospital in the South West of Madagascar in August 2006 in the course of a family holiday in the region. These projects, involving assistance to renovate the Hospital canteen, as well as establishing an internet facility to be used for midwifery training and income generation purposes at the Hospital, have been warmly welcomed by the local community. The project also ties in with the important work that Australian companies, such as Madagascar Resources are doing in relation to the mining sector in Tulear.
We are currently scoping DAP project possibilities in Fort Dauphin which is the home of the recently inaugurated illmenite project undertaken by the Anglo-Australian company, Riotinto. We expect to see our Australian presence expand significantly in this region as a result of increasing numbers of Australian personnel
working on this USD 600 million project.
A DAP recipient and Hospital representative
proudly showcasing the new IT facility
funded by the Australian Embassy at the
Tulear Hospital
Finally, we welcome the continuing work of Graham Forward’s Perth based team, “Australian Doctors for Africa” (ADFA) who completed their second stint in Tulear from 19 November until 29 November 2006. This marvelous project involves undertaking a number of specialized operations on the local population in Tulear. A significant donation of medical equipment has also been offered to Tulear by ADFA, and we welcome the excellent initiative.