Flooding in Triệu Phong District in the central province of Quảng Trị in mid-October, after torrential downpours in the previous days. — VNA/VNS Photo Hồ Cầu

HÀ NỘI — Prime Minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc asked for a drastic and co-ordinated response to help stabilise the lives of people affected by recent flooding and storms in the central region of Việt Nam before the traditional Lunar New Year (Tết) holiday.

In a recent order, the Government leader told ministries, State agencies and local administrations to focus on ensuring food security and rebuilding of houses for disaster-hit communities, repair critical infrastructure damaged by floods and storms and swiftly resume economic production – especially agriculture.

Authorities should review climate change scenarios, have a comprehensive assessment of risks of natural disasters and their impacts on people's livelihoods, socio-economic, and develop appropriate responses for each form of disaster.

Critical infrastructure and people’s houses should be built and changed to better cope with natural disasters. A guideline on flood-proof houses should be issued for communities in high-risk areas, while policies should be in place to help relocate residents from dangerous zones, especially those hit hardest by the floods and landslides.

Search and rescue efforts should also be enhanced, with equipment and human resources sufficient to respond to increasingly complex disasters worsened by climate change, he said.

PM Phúc also asked for more stringent supervision and management over socio-economic development projects to make sure they comply with anti-natural disasters and climate change efforts, strictly protect natural disasters while continuing to grow and restore lost areas of protection forests at upstream areas and coastal mangroves, and minimise impacts to the natural balance of mountains and hills, rivers and streams.

State agencies and local governments must beef up resources for natural disaster prevention and response and search and rescue efforts, for repairs of reservoirs and dams and eroded coastal and riverside areas.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development must quickly deliver a report on restocking emergency reserves, facilitate the supply of seedlings for localities to restart agricultural activities, and direct local authorities to switch to climate-resilent models of farming and husbandry.

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment must work to better its weather forecasts and disaster warning capacity, set up more hydro-meteorological monitoring stations and develop zoning maps of natural disaster risks, especially in high-risk residential areas.

The Ministry of Planning and Investment shall give priority to disbursing funding for hard-hit central localities in the early periods of the medium-term public investment plan 2021-25, while at the same time, mobilise official development assistance (ODA) loans and foreign concessional loans to supplement resources to support overcoming consequences and reconstruction after storms and floods.

The State Bank of Việt Nam is tasked with guiding credit institutions to implement measures to support disaster-affected people and businesses to overcome the consequences of storms and floods, restructure the debts of affected households and provide loans for them to restart economic activities.

The widespread floods and storms hitting the central region in October-November were particularly devastating, resulting in a total of 249 people dead or missing, 239,000 houses damaged and 1,531 houses collapsed, along with serious damage to other infrastructure and facilities.

The economic losses were estimated at VNĐ30 trillion (US$1.3 billion). — VNS