12 May 2005

British nuclear test veterans set up aid link with Kiribati school

2:01 pm on 12 May 2005

Two veterans of British nuclear testing in Kiribati have set up an aid programme at a school on Kiritimati Island.

The Kiribati Childrens Foundation was set up by British survivors of the atomic testing who say no-one has ever studied the effects of the bombing on the local population.

The organisation's founder, Tony Stannage, is this week visiting the St Francis High School.

A teacher there, Sister Kirara, is looking forward to the partnership.

"They've given us some musical instruments, such as drum kits, guitars and a keyboard. It is going to be good by the sound of the man who brought himself here and offered us a lot of things and insights and a kind of link, and some other things like functional materials for the school, or like modern technologies, like these computers, something like this, eh."

The school has been twinned with a school in the British county of Lincolnshire.

More than 9-hundred British, New Zealand and Fijian people witnessed nuclear testing on Christmas Island in the 1950s.