National mine training centre planned

A national training centre for mine action will be established at Asha Golgol (no details of area given) by the Commission for Coordination with the Peacekeeping Mission. The centre would include lecture rooms, accommodation, a medical aid post, office and kitchen areas, as well as an explosive store and training area, the joint Eritrean Relief and Refugee Commission and UN Information Coordination Centre (ICC) said in its August Humanitarian Update. It said the German government had allocated US $412,200 for the development of the facility, which was intended to train 15 trainers.

At present, the Eritrean De-mining Agency has 234 staff of which two teams of 60 manual clearance staff are based in Sheraro, one team of 60 manual clearing staff are under initial training in Asha Golgol, two four-person teams are located in Barentu and two three-person teams are located in Adi Keyih. According to ICC, there are about 880 humanitarian de-miners in the whole country, with almost half of them from HALO Trust, a British de-mining NGO.