Saudi Arabia pledged to provide financial assistance for a number of educational programs for the Palestinian people under the supervision of UNESCO, according to an agreement signed here today by Prince Naif bin Abdulaziz, the Minister of Interior, on behalf of the Saudi Government.
The agreement was signed by Prince Naif in his capacity as General Supervisor for the Saudi Committee for the Relief of Palestinian People (SCRPP) on the Saudi side, and by Ahmed Sayyad, Deputy Director General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and Dr. Naeem Abu-Alhims, Minister of Higher Education of Palestine, on the other side.
UNESCO's Director General Kueshero Matsura, Dr. Khalid Alanqari, the Minister of Higher Education and Dr. Saed Alorabi Alharthi, Advisor to the Minister of Interior, were also present at the signing ceremony.
The agreement stipulates that the Saudi committee provides assistance worth SR56,995,698 to finance a number of educational programs for the Palestinian people while UNESCO directly supervises the implementation of these programs upon authorization of the Saudi authority.
This grant covers 75 percent of the tuition fees for male and female students in Palestinian universities (equivalent to more than SR43 million for 15,989 students) and 75 percent of the tuition fees of students of society colleges (for 1,747 students costing more than SR6 million), in addition to supporting the budgets of eleven Palestinian universities and colleges with more than SR8 million.
In a statement following the event, Alharthi, who is also the Chairman of the Saudi Relief Committee, said the committee was providing all kinds of support for the Palestinian people through more than 36 relief programs and humanitarian projects which contributed to the alleviation of the sufferings of the Palestinian people, at a total cost of SR728,566,274.
The committee has implemented 35 projects worth SR730 million, including health programs, particularly building hospitals, purchasing medicine and medical equipment and ambulances, treating the injured in Saudi hospitals and providing 50 dialysis devices.
The educational programs include covering tuition fees of university and society colleges students, and granting scholarships to 30 students outside Palestine.
The housing programs include repairing 2,545 houses in the West Bank and Gaza, and building 600 residential units, while the food and corporeal programs include the distribution of more than one million food baskets and distribution of bread, sacrifice meat, blankets and clothes, as well as paying the wages of hired laborers.
Most recently, a royal order was issued to establish mutual cooperation between the Saudi Relief Committee and the UNICEF to implement a program to combat mumps and German measles and to provide school bags for 90,000 students in Palestinian schools at a cost of SR13,500,000.
