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| Sunday, 13 March 2005 |
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Tsunami early warning system for Asia by Shirajiv Sirimane reporting from Germany BERLIN (Saturday): The Asian Development Bank has released 10 million US dollars to set up an tsunami early warning system for Asia. According to the Secretary, Minister of Tourism Dr. Pratap Ramunujam who spoke to Daily News after the opening ceremony of the world's largest Tourism Fair ITB on Friday said that this announcement was made at the second WTO meeting which was held in Berlin. He said that the centre is likely to be set up in India and Sri Lanka would have its own monitoring unit in Colombo. In addition to this the Thailand government has already decided to set up their own tsunami warning system in Phuket. "Both the Indian and Thaialand centres would be linked to Colombo and the other Asian countries so that if a situation arises all the Asian countries would be fed the information from both India and Thailand," he said. He said that though most of the tsunami affected countries have recovered, some foreigners still fear to visit these countries since there is no proper warning system in place. "The two proposed centres in India and Thailand will solve this problem as well," he said. The Ambassador for Sri Lanka in Germany, Jayantha Palipane said that the German market which generated the highest arrivals to Sri Lanka are showing signs of picking up after the tsunami. "Two airline operators LTU and Condor have recommenced their flights to Sri Lanka and this is a positive sign," he said. Germany is a very important market for Sri Lanka and ITB would give the Sri Lankan hotel industry an ideal opportunity to capture that market. "The ITB also has a strong impact for Europe and this too would be another advantage for Lankan participants as this is the time the tourist trade is about to sell winter packages to tourists," he said. He also said that the fact only less than 20 per cent of the tourism industry was affected by the tsunami, must be projected in a bigger way. "We are working on this and telling people that Sri Lanka's nature, culture and the adventure are not damaged," he said. |
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