France’s $17M gift to Lebanon schools
mechref (Lebanon) — France’s visiting foreign minister pledged on Friday €15 million (about $17 million) in aid to Lebanon’s schools that are struggling under the weight of the country’s economic crisis.
Jean-Yves Le Drian said France will not let the “Lebanese youth alone” face the crisis that has hit the education sector hard. Schools have let some teachers and administrators go and many face the risk of closure. Many parents, struggling to pay private school fees, have enrolled their children in already overcrowded public schools.
The French assistance will go to a network of over 50 French and Francophone schools.
The economic crisis has impacted almost all facets of life in
Lebanon, a small Mediterranean country long considered a middle-income state. Since last year, unemployment has risen and poverty deepened, as foreign currency dried up and the national currency lost more than 80 per cent of its value against the dollar.
Le Drian, who arrived here late on Wednesday, urged Lebanese officials to go through with an audit of the country’s central bank, reform a bloated and highly indebted electricity sector and maintain an independent judiciary.
Le Drian said France has already donated €50 million ($58 million), primarily to the healthcare sector to deal with the coronavirus challenge. “Lebanon is on the verge of the abyss. But there are ways on the table to fix this,” he said during a visit on Friday to a school in Mechref district, south of the capital, Beirut.
On Thursday, Le Drian said the only way out of the financial and economic crisis is for Lebanon to secure a programme with the International Monetary Fund. —
Lebanon is on the verge of the abyss. But there are ways on the table to fix this
Jean-Yves Le Drian
French Foreign Minister
beirut — A senior Lebanese official said he had taken bad news of testing positive for Covid-19 virus during a lunch with visiting French Foreign Minister JeanYves Le Drian.
“I received a telephone call from the hospital saying the test was positive, so naturally I left the lunch and informed all those present,” Hadi Hashem, head of the Lebanese foreign minister’s office, told the local OTV broadcaster.
A spokesman for Le Brian, whose lunch with Lebanese officials on Thursday came during a trip urging reforms to the crisis-hit economy, had no comment on the matter.
Speaking by video, Hashem told OTV he had taken a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test ahead of a planned trip to Denmark, but was now self-isolating at home until Monday before another test. “The result was unexpected but the most important thing is that the virus level is low and not contagious,” he said.
After Hashem’s diagnosis, Lebanese Foreign Minister Nassif Hitti and his political affairs director underwent PCR tests, but their results came back negative, a health ministry source said.
Lebanon has recorded 3,258 infections and 43 deaths from the novel coronavirus since February. —