TOKYO - Aid groups urged Japan on Wednesday not to cut its official development assistance budget, following Tokyo’s decision to slash around 10 percent of foreign aid allocations for fiscal 2011 from the initial plan to raise funds for reconstruction after the devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
Representatives of the aid groups, who will attend a conference in Tokyo from Thursday on implementing the U.N. Millennium Development Goals on poverty reduction, called on Japan to maintain its efforts to help poor nations while pursuing its own recovery.
Thomas Chandy, executive director of Save the Children India, told a meeting of Japanese parliamentarians that while more than 25,000 people in Japan were killed or remain missing from the March disasters, the world should not forget poor people dying from preventable causes.
‘‘I would also like to remind you that in the rest of the world, especially the poor nations, there are many, many people dying on a daily basis. It’s almost like a tsunami breaking out slowly across the world,’’ he said. (read more...)
