One thousand people have been employed in Dili this week under a Transitional Employment Project to clean roadsides, drainage and market area. Another thousand is expected to be employed under the same project before the end of the month. UNTAET PKF will provide its engineers to help the project with machinery.

The people participating in this project will be employed until the end of June and will receive wages according to the stipend system already in place for public sector workers (US$77a month for unskilled workers and US$100 for semi-skilled).

USAID funded and UNTAET designed and implemented, TEPs have provided short-term employment for some 6,000 people across East Timor since late February. Mainly concentrating on clean-up activities, the initiative currently provides work in Dili, Ermera, Liquica, Manatuto, Aileu and Lautem.

Up to five million dollars were set aside to finance these projects and will include payments for wages and purchase of tools. USAID has agreed to provide 100,000 US$ in wages for each district and up to 80,000 in tools and equipment.

East Timor Public Service Commission will start discussing job classification in new civil service at its fourth meeting tomorrow in Dili. The discussions are expected to focus on determining job categories and possibly the salary scale for civil servants. The commission is also expected to start reviewing job descriptions for deputy district administrators.

The commission has already agreed on recommendations on working week and hours of work for civil servants, annual and sick leave and holidays. The proposed list of holidays includes New Years Day (1 of January), Ascension of Our Lady (15 August), All Saints Day (1 November), Immaculate Conception (8 December), Christmas Day (25 December), Good Friday. Three holidays will be recommended to the next congress of the CNRT as national holidays. Until a final decision has been made, members recommended that civil servants be granted paid holidays on Consultation day (30 August), Liberation Day (20 September) and Santa Cruz Day (12 November). Commission members also agreed to recommend Labor Day (1 May) as paid holiday.

The commission is also expected to discuss parental leave at the tomorrow's meeting.

UNTAET Judicial Affairs Department has started with the recruitment of Timorese prison personnel for Becora, Gleno and Baucau detention facilities. Up to seventy will be recruited by the end of this month and 250 in total.

Eighteen former prison workers have been identified already, and possible candidates are being interviewed daily. They will be receiving on-job training from international prison experts who will be recruited by UNTAET. Ten of them are to arrive in the next two weeks from New Zealand.

The renovations of three cellblocks and administration buildings of the Becora prison have started. The works should provide for accommodation of 100 detainees by the end of this month. Renovations of Gleno prison are at a similar stage with works almost complete on cellblocks, which should accommodate some 120 prisoners.

First ten sites regard as part of the historical and cultural heritage of East Timor were marked as protected in a project envisaged to cover the whole country.

A joint project by UNTAET Department of Agriculture, Japanese aid agency, JICA and Timorese experts, with the help of a historian Geoffrey Gunn, among other sites identified Old Town in Lahane, Banyan tree alleys in Taibesi, one of the first Catholic chapels built by Portuguese, the former museum building and others.