Speeches Shim
The Plastics Upcycling Alliance is helping to improve the natural beauty of Timor-Leste and health and safety of its people by creating and growing a plastics recycling industry. Like many countries around the world, Timor-Leste faces the urgent challenge of finding waste management solutions for plastic. Plastic is burned in rubbish piles, clogs critical drainage infrastructure or washes up on the country’s once pristine beaches. This creates risks to human health and safety and jeopardizes growth potential for the nascent but promising tourism industry.
Advancing Timor-Leste’s Autonomous Telecommunications Landscape (ATLATL) is working to promote business-friendly policy and investment in the information communication technology sector. Timor-Leste is one of the very few countries in the world not connected to the internet via fiber optic cable. As such, internet speeds are typically 25 times slower than other Asian and Pacific countries, and costs are considerably higher due to dependence on satellite connections. Only 25 percent of Timorese use the internet regularly, compared to 46 percent for other Asian and Pacific countries. Policy development in the Information Communication Technology (ICT) sector is lacking, which limits private sector investment needed to increase internet speeds and improve products and services available in Timor-Leste.
Timor-Leste youth face an uncertain future in the post-conflict country where more than half the population is under 30 and the unemployment rate for young people is nearly 10.5 percent, but four young Timorese artists are seeing a brighter horizon with help from USAID’s Tourism For All Project.
The U.S. Government through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has committed $1.1 million to help the Government of Timor-Leste fight COVID-19, U.S. Ambassador to Timor-Leste Kathleen Fitzpatrick announced today.
Timor-Leste’s profile on the world tourism stage got a little larger with the help of USAID’s Tourism For All Project, which recently worked with the Ministry of Tourism and the private sector to bring a group of three travel agents from Singapore for a visit to familiarize themselves with Timor. The five-day trip gave the agents a first-hand view of some of Timor-Leste’s charms as an international tourism destination, from the shores of scuba paradise Ataruo Island to Dili to the mountains of Maubisse.
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