BRATISLAVA, August 18, (WEBNOVINY) — The Cabinet of Iveta Radicova voted on Wednesday to put aside an additional EUR 13.3 million for rescue works in flood-stricken areas. The money will be allocated from reserves of the budgetary chapter of the General Treasury Administration. The government plans to refund costs of towns and villages for rescue works after a series of recent devastating floods in Slovakia. Local governments calculated their expenditures for rescue works so far to be almost EUR 11.9 million. The state administration has spent an additional EUR 1.3 million for rescue works after the floods.
Flooding hit large parts of Slovakia in May for the first time this year followed by more local floods since then. Last week, the Cabinet calculated the incurred damages to be in the range of EUR 600-650 million. Damage to state property reached EUR 250 million while municipalities and individuals calculated damage of EUR 325.8 million. Self-government calculations reached about EUR 51.2 million. However, these sums will edge even higher after damages caused by flash floods in the Upper Nitra and Turiec regions this weekend will be included.
To ease the impact of damages to the property of private entities, the previous Cabinet of Robert Fico has released EUR 25 million from the state budget this year, of which EUR 2.7 million has not been used yet. More than EUR 13 million was sent to the flood-stricken areas during the previous government’s term in the office; the rest, EUR 9.5 million, was sent after the new center-right government came into office in July. The Cabinet earmarked EUR 1 million for engineering and geological surveys of recently flooded areas threatened by landslides.
SITA
