Canadian envoy to hand over houses in Aceh

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Canadian Ambassador to Indonesia John Holmes will travel to Banda Aceh to meet with project partners delivering his country`s post-tsunami reconstruction assistance.

While in Banda Aceh, the ambassador will participate in a ceremony marking the transfer to owners of new houses built by the Canadian Red Cross and funded by the Canadian government through the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the Canadian Embassy said in a press statement issued on Friday.

The transfer to owners of 185 houses is part of a $130 million (Rp1.24 trillion) initiative by the Canadian Red Cross to build up to 6,300 houses in Aceh Besar, Aceh Jaya and Nias.

Aceh bore the brunt of an undersea 9 magnitude earthquake and a subsequent tsunami on December 26, 2004 when around 200,000 people perished and thousands of homes leveled to the ground.