Yemen to launch 1st stage radar marine project in Aden

ADEN, June 21 (Saba) - Yemeni Coastguard Authority is to inaugurate
on Tuesday in Aden the 1st stage of marine radar project funded by
Italian government at total cost of € 20 million.

Director of Telecommunication in the authority Ahmed Sahbi told Saba
that this project is a part of the authority's efforts to promote
the level of its technical activity to secure the navigation safety
by monitoring vessels in the Yemeni and international water passages
in Aden Gulf and the Red Sea via the radar network which provides
coverage of about 45 Km in the sea.

He indicated that this system uses optical fibres techniques to send
information from the coastal centres according to the limited area
in the sea to the main centre of the coastguard authority in the
capital Sana'a.

Sahbi pointed out that the arrangements are underway for expanding
the radar network to include six monitoring centres, each centre
works with 12 radar stations in the main towns of Khokha, Mocha,
Mion, Khor Al-Omirah, Al-Shihr, and Shograh in addition to Aden city
which gathers all information.

The coastal areas of the cities targeted by the radar monitoring
network amounts in its geographical limit to 450 Km from the total
coastal area of the Yemeni territorial waters, which amounts to 2400
Km, Sahbi affirmed.

He indicated that the vital project was achieved by a Yemeni
technical team along with experts from the Italian company SELEX
specializing in this field.

It is worth to mention that the work in this vital and strategic
project has started in the last year 2008 will enable the
coastguards to receive SOS from the ships asking for help and to
discover early any piracy act in the sea.