Jordan Times
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
Kingdom's museums to receive
'expert' assistance
By Sarah Ryan
AMMAN — The Kingdom's increasing number of museums will receive training,
expertise, materials and equipment from the Japan International Cooperation
Agency (JICA) in an agreement signed on Sunday at the Ministry of Tourism and
Antiquities.
“It's the first project of its kind in this area,” said Hideo Morikawa, JICA
resident representative in Amman.
Tourism was selected for this influx of aid because it is a promising sector and
is crucial for national economic and social development in Jordan, the JICA
official said.
The three-year agreement, signed by Alia Hattough-Bouran, minister of tourism
and antiquities, and JICA, will assign three long-term experts to the museums,
provide training for museum workers in Jordan and Japan, as well as materials
and equipment that are needed for the exhibits.
“We hope it will lengthen the stay of visitors to Jordan, we're aiming for them
to have a longer stay,” said Sami Halaseh, chief engineer at the Ministry of
Tourism and Antiquities.
The technical cooperation agreement is the next phase in several years of
tourism-related cooperation between the Japanese and Jordanian governments.
As a backgrounder on tourism in the Kingdom, JICA and the Jordanian government
produced “The Study on Tourism Development Master Plan in the Hashemite Kingdom
of Jordan,” from 1994-1996.
This study led to the Tourism Sector Development Project (TSDP), financed by the
Japan Bank for International Cooperation, which targeted four tourism zones in
the Kingdom in which to build museums: Downtown Amman, Salt, Karak and the Dead
Sea.
The Karak Archaeological Museum was inaugurated in August this year, the Dead
Sea Museum is scheduled to be finished within a year and both the Historic Old
Salt Museum and the National Museum in Amman are due to be completed by 2006.
As part of the TSDP, these museums will be linked to each other as `one day
tourism circuits' in order to promote Gateway Tourism based in Amman.
With the development of these museums, some training and cooperation has already
taken place over the past two years.
One of the curators of the museum in Karak was sent on a JICA training course in
Museum Management Technology in Japan in 2002 and several Japanese volunteers
have been in Jordan over the past two years facilitating development efforts.