The New Indian Express 19.01.2010
Barcelona, Thiruvananthapuram to enter a tie-up
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Barcelona City Council has agreed to enter into a twin city tie-up with the City Corporation, Thiruvananthapuram. The MoU on this will be signed between the two Mayors of the two cities in the last week of this month.
The agreement was reached following talks held between Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor and Barcelona Mayor Jordi Hereu in Barcelona recently.
The Barcelona Mayor will be reaching the capital city along with a delegation for signing the MoU. Since the MoU has to get the clearance from the Central Government, Shashi Tharoor will be having discussions in this regard with the Central Ministries concerned.
The draft of the MoU has already been sent to Thiruvananthapuram Corporation Mayor C. Jayan Babu for taking all steps towards signing an MoU with the Barcelona City Council. It is learnt that the tie-up will benefit the capital by way of assisting basic infrastructure development, bringing in more resources to develop the research activities at Regional Cancer Centre here and envisaging new techniques in the treatment of waste disposal. A delegation from the Spanish city of Barcelona headed by Josep Roca, Director, International Relations, Barcelona City Council, and Gerardo Fueyo-Bros, councillor, Spanish Embassy in India, had visited the city in October last year and the areas of cooperation were discussed.
The delegation had then met Mayor C. Jayan Babu, Deputy Mayor V.
Jayaprakash, standing committee chairmen, Corporation Secretary P.S.
Mohammed Sageer, senior municipal officers, Knowledge Manager of the Corporation Kasthuri Rangan and officials from the office of the Minister for Local Self-Government Paloli Mohammed Kutty, apart from Shashi Tharoor.
The discussion had focussed on transport, medical research, water resource management, sports, IT, heritage conservation and urban planning. The Barcelona team had explained about social security measures, town planning schemes and sports development activities implemented by the Barcelona city council.
The team had also expressed willingness to share the experiences of the Spanish city in hosting the 1992 Summer Olympics It was as part of Shashi Tharoor’s initiative to develop Thiruvananthapuram to international standards, that had led to the concept of having a tie-up with the Spanish city Barcelona.
