Calvia provides aid for earthquake victims

Staff Reporter CALVIÀ town council is to donate 42'070 euros to the Red Cross in the Balearics for the Iranian earthquake victims fund. The money will be used to help provide the fastest possible relief to individuals and groups who suffered as a result of the devastating earthquake that shook the Iranian city of Bam on 26 December last. Calvià*s donation, which was officially presented yesterday in the town hall, forms part of the municipal budget that has been set aside for a Third World Co-operation scheme. Calvià council's gesture is a public demonstration of its ongoing support for the aid policies of the Balearic Government. Calvià is now the second local council in the Islands to allocate a section of its budget to ”Third World” aid, following the example of Palma. During the presentation of the donation, the Mayor of Calvià, Carlos Delgado, highlighted the need to draw the efforts of the whole municipality into this project. As a complementary action to the aid grant, Delgado announced a meeting which is scheduled to be held today at 6pm in the town hall. It will be attended by an across-the-board range of local organisations and associations which will instigate fund-raising activities. At the meeting, it is intended to propose a panel of citizens and district groups who would work to secure short term funding for the aid programme. The mayor's deputy in Social Welfare, Teresa Martorell, indicated that each unit would be committed to launching the scheme within its own area of expertise but that at the end of January, a joint effort would be organised. According to a director of International Co-operation, Marcelo Unamuno, 50'000 people have so far died as a result of the earthquake and 80'000 have lost their homes and possessions. These people are in need of urgent help. This organisation puts the amount of economic help required in the Iranian town at some 12 million euros. Some 50 percent of this figure has already been raised through the joint donations of 180 countries. Currently, the money which has been raised as much by individuals as by institutions, has been used for the acquisition of blankets, tents and water purifying tablets. Unamuno also gave prominence to the speed with which aid material is arriving in the disaster area. Such success is largely thanks to the infrastructure on which the Red Crescent in Iran depends, more than 8'500 volunteers at the disaster site.