[sustran] fwd: bicycle donations to East Timor

[SUSTRAN Network Secretariat]

>From the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC)
10 Feb 2000
Darwin resident overseeing bicycle donation to East Timor


A Darwin man hopes he can supply 200,000 bikes to East Timorese residents
during the next five years.

Mark Pate has just returned from Dili after spending nine days distributing
about 250 bicycles donated by people from the Northern Territory, South
Australia, Queensland and Victoria.

Mr Pate says he has had an excited response to the bikes in Dili and has
sent them to rural areas of East Timor as well.

He says he is taking another 400 to 500 bikes to Dili this weekend and
hopes Australians' generosity will continue.

"Hopefully this project just gets bigger and bigger, it won't get smaller,"
he said.

"My ideal is that we get 200,000 bikes to Timor which I could definitely
visualise over five years, considering Darwin's response.

"Interstate we've probably up around three thousand bikes in movement to
Dili so I can't see 200,000 Australia wide is such a difficult thing," Mr
Pate said.

© 2000 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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Distributed for the purpose of education and research.

A. Rahman Paul BARTER
Sustainable Transport Action Network for Asia
and the Pacific (the SUSTRAN Network)
P.O. Box 11501, Kuala Lumpur 50748, Malaysia.
E-mail: sustran at po.jaring.my
URL: http://www.malaysiakini.com/sustran (under construction)

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