Today, the Government meeting considered the readiness of central and local executive bodies for the 2018 flood period. A briefing with the participation of Vice Minister of Internal Affairs, Yuri Ilyin, Chairman of the Committee on Water Resources of the MA RK, Islam Abishev, Chairman of the Emergency Situations Committee of the MIA RK, Vladimir Bekker, was held at the press center of the Government.

The speakers answered the questions from media representatives about the forecasts for the forthcoming flood, as well as recommendations on preventing possible risks.

According to the Vice Minister of Internal Affairs, Yuri Ilyin, more than 7 billion tenge is provided annually for the liquidation of natural disasters in the republican budget. In addition, certain funds are allocated by local budgets. In total, more than 24 billion tenge is provided for this purpose this year.

In 2017, as a result of intensive snow melting in the steppe zone, 54 settlements were flooded. At the moment, there are 160 such potentially dangerous settlements in the steppe zone, and in the floodplain and along the riverbeds — more than two thousand.

Participants of the briefing were unanimous in the opinion that people should be moved from such areas to safer places.

"In Atbasar, a part of the houses in the flooding zone has already been demolished and the people have been resettled, the work is underway. In the Aktobe region, the resettlement of people from risk zones has also begun," Yuri Ilyin noted.

Chairman of the Committee on Water Resources of the MA RK, Islam Abishev, supported the instruction of the Prime Minister Bakytzhan Sagintayev, voiced at the meeting of the Government.

"Today, the Prime Minister made a very right proposal — to start the resettlement of people from the flood zones and once and for all solve this problem. Otherwise, we will annually build dams, spending huge amounts of money on this," I. Abishev said.

As for the recommendations, Yuri Ilyin urged, first of all, the residents themselves to clean up snow from the yard territories in a timely manner. Local executive bodies should clean the streets of snow.

I. Abishev also expressed a reproach against agricultural organizations, which stopped dealing with snow retention. According to him, we have more than 20 million hectares of arable land. Snow retention significantly raises the yield of fields. And the snow left in the field is a guarantee that there will be less water during the flood period.

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