Dr. Choomjet Karnjanakesorn, General Manager (GM) of the APTERR Secretariat, accompanied with Mr. Toshiki Tojo, Japanese Expert, and the APTERR staff had a fruitful meeting with Lao PDR’s government agencies and subsequently visited the warehouse for inspecting the APTERR stocks on 8 July 2022 in Vientiane.
The meeting was taken place at the new office of the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare. Mr. Souphonesay Lorphengsy, Deputy Director of the Social Welfare Department, as the host of the meeting, gave a very warm welcome to the APTERR team, Mr. Takuya Uo, Second Secretary of the Embassy of Japan in Lao PDR and Mr.Sakpasit Manibod, Technical Staff of the Department of Planning and Cooperation, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Lao PDR. Apart from updating on Lao PDR’s food security situation and implementing plans of ongoing Tier 3 programmes, Mr. Tojo introduced the meeting with Japan’s initiatives namely the ‘precooked rice’ and the ‘School Distribution Programme’ to enhance APTERR’s capacities in responding to people’s needs amid the emergency and safeguarding food security in the region.
The APTERR Secretariat lastly visited the warehouses under a supervision of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) to inspect the APTERR stocks which have been prepositioned since early this year. The APTERR Secretariat checked the quality of the rice consisting of 300 MT from Japan’s contribution and 700 MT from the Republic of Korea’s contribution. The 1,000-MT rice has a good quality and will be kept for releasing in the case of emergency in Lao PDR. If there is no emergency occurring during the 12-month stockpile period, the rice will eventually be released to assist people for poverty alleviation.
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