PRESS RELEASE

February 25, 2008

U.S. Firm Donates Detectors to Locate Landmines and Explosive Remnants of War

(Hanoi) A U.S. company has donated 24 magnetic detectors worth over $75,000 to help humanitarian deminers locate and clear persistent landmines and explosive remnants of war in Vietnam. 

Schonstedt Instrument Company, an employee-owned company, is one of the 61 Public-Private Partners in the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs.  Since May 2007, the company, which manufactures specialized detectors used by survey, demining, utility, telecommunications, and energy firms around the world, has donated 74 of its magnetic detectors for demining in Laos, Somalia, Tajikistan, and Vietnam, in coordination with the United Nations Mine Action Service.

All 24 detectors donated this month have been sent to Vietnam where they will be used by Mines Advisory Group and Norwegian Peoples Aid, both of which are also State Department Public-Private Partners.  The Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement’s bilateral and multilateral humanitarian mine action programs, and its Public-Private Partnerships, together have contributed to dramatically reducing the rate of reported casualties from landmines and explosive remnants of war around the world.

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