After nearly three years of preliminary research, Japan will dispatch a mission of aid experts to Cuba as early as this summer to begin full-scale work on the development of a project to clean up heavily polluted Havana Bay, government sources said Tuesday.
The mission members will be from the Japan International Cooperation Agency, a government-affiliated major aid organ, the sources said, adding it will take about two years to draft a master plan.
The bay is heavily polluted with industrial and household waste. Japan has been conducting preliminary research into the project since the summer of 1999, acting in response to a request from Cuba. The project is part of Japan's technical cooperation, one type of its official development assistance extended directly to developing countries.