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Ahram Online
France’s visiting Foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian pledged €15 Million ($17 Million) in aid to Lebanon’s schools on Friday. The sum will go to a network of over 50 French and Francophone schools.
He said “France will not let the Lebanese youth alone facing the crisis
that has hit the education sector hard”.
Schools in Lebanon have suspended teachers and administrators and some face the risk of closure. Parents, struggling to pay private school fees, enrolled their children in overcrowded government 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 currency tumbled to lose more than 80% of its value against the dollar.
Le Drian said “France can only help Lebanon face the crisis, if Lebanese officials do their part”. He urged the country to introduce much needed reforms.
The minister is the first senior Western official to visit the struggling country. In stern public messages, he 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”.
France is the former colonial power in Lebanon and has previously organized conferences that pledged assistance to Lebanon but demanded reforms to the public sector and governance.
Le Drian said, on Thursday, “the only way out of the financial and economic crisis for Lebanon is to secure a program with the International Monetary Fund. Then, France and its allies can secure assistance to Lebanon”.
