The training program for National Council members and its Secretariat started yesterday, 30 October, with a course in parliamentary practice and procedure.
The training is being coordinated by Lynn Lovelock, an Australian parliamentary officer from the Legislative Council of New South Wales.
The second phase of the training will commence on Monday, 13 November, and finish on Friday, 17 November. Two senior American parliamentary officers will be conducting this training, which will focus on budgets and appropriations.
The third phase is planned for mid-January and will be conducted by a senior English parliamentary officer. Primarily Australian trainers will conduct a detailed training program for the National Council secretariat staff on 13-16 November.
DOCUMENTS ON DISPLAY
An exhibition of old documents and pictures found in the attic of UNTAET’s Headquarters is put on display today in the Civil Service Academy in Dili.
The two-day exhibition, organized by the East Timor Transitional Administration’s National Archives project, shows some samples of photographs, maps and documents that will be put on display in two months. So far, the oldest document that have been found is a government report on the situation in Dili, dating back to 1890. Three hundred boxes of unclassified archive items have been collected since the work started last August.
The selection and classification of the documents is carried out by a team of Timorese led by the prominent Portuguese historian José Mattoso, the former director of the Portuguese National Archives.
In addition, UNTAET’s Department of Public Works is currently drawing up plans for the rehabilitation of a former Indonesian army training facility in Hera, Dili, to house the planned National Archives Building. The work is expected to start in three weeks, once the tender process is over, and take one month.
The building will serve as a resource centre with documents, such as minutes of meetings, contracts, correspondence, accountant books, decisions, among other things. It will be open for everybody.
VENDORS TO BE RELOCATED
Vendors, currently selling goods at the Dili oceanfront, will move to newly refurbished sites along the drainage canal in Bairo Lesidere and Desa Akadiruhun neighborhoods on Friday, 3 November.
This is the first phase in a plan carried out by Dili District to improve the situation for the vendors in Dili. The Peacekeeping Force and UNTAET’s Humanitarian Pillar will help transport stalls and other material to the new location, where toilets, power, water and waste bins are already available.
Rubbish will be collected daily and the new location will provide sanitary conditions. Forty-eight vendors will move on Friday. This does not include the vendors selling fish. They will be relocated to the newly refurbished fish market in the Santana neighborhood in Dili later this month.
The newly renovated markets in Becora and Comoro will open to vendors by mid-November. Stalls have been given to 180 vendors at each market and some 2,600 will be housed in an open area next to the market buildings.
