OREANDA-NEWS. July 01, 2010. Mykola Azarov: Last week, the Western Ukraine faced a large-scale disaster. Unfortunately, floods killed two persons. Thousands of citizens have been evacuated from their houses. Flooding destroyed the bridges and dams. Flooded houses, lands, eroded roads, damaged power lines. The damages are huge.

On Saturday in Chernivtsi region on behalf of the President, I examined the situation and rescue operations. First of all, I want to thank those who are selflessly day and night helping people. I mean the staff of the Emergencies Ministry, policemen, local high officials of all levels and average citizens who are doing what they can. But against dedication of these men we can clearly see failures, frank abuses, which led to catastrophic consequences. Huge funds - 4.5 billion UAH - were allocated to our Western regions to rectify the consequences of flooding in 2008 and to prevent the impact of future floods. These funds were brazenly stolen, blown for nothing. Within two years, no one of the bridges in Chernivtsi region was completed, I emphasize – no one. I have seen with my own eyes the bridge over the river Prut in the village of Marshintsy. It is a small structure that can be completed in five or six months. But still, except of piles in water, nothing is built. And this costs 68 million UAH. I have calculated that each pile costs over three million UAH. What to say? There is neither conscience, no sense.

I have a question: who developed this, judging by the price, "Cyclopean construction”? Who approved a cost sheet? Who performed the work? Who controlled the use of materials, resources, progress of work? How could so happen that the obvious abuse occurred to the view and none of responsible officials did like look over this? And this happened not only in Chernivtsi region, but also over the areas where infrastructure must be restored and a new protection must be built long ago.

Funds were just sacking according to a single schedule. Thereby, there isn’t a single completed project in any region. The previous power did nothing to protect the citizens.

In Chernivtsi region I gave instructions to dismiss the heads of the regional CRO, basin department of water resources management, regional auto-road. I instructed the Prosecutor and Head of the Department of the MIA in the Chernivtsi region to investigate within a month every case of each unfinished project and finally fundamentally assess all those involved in the theft.

Dear colleagues, we got a very sad lesson. Analysis of the situation shows systemic failures that lead to catastrophic consequences. First of all, this is a lack of waterproof facilities, water level regulation system, lack of drains, ponds, sluices. There are no works on silt control. Reservoirs are using for other goals. Houses are not transferred to safe places and so on.

Floods are caused by barbarous deforestation. Turns out, nobody observes the conditions of licences. And often logging is generally illegal. And there are a lot of other examples.

It is clear that we need to develop and strictly implement a comprehensive state programme that would systematically guarantee the long-term protection of citizens and property from natural disasters. They, of course, will happen, but there should not be such catastrophic consequences.

So, I have instructed the Ministry of Agrarian Policy, Ministry of Regional Development and Construction, Ministry of Economy, State Committee for Water Saving, State Forestry Committee under the supervision of Vice Prime Minister V. Slauta to prepare for the next week a meeting where we will do a comprehensive analysis, assess the volume of problems and define all programme’s elements to be created.

And now First Vice Prime Minister Andriy Klyuyev is to take charge of operations to rectify the consequences of floods. He is entrusted to use all necessary experts, all resources. First of all, we must prevent from new victims, ensure people moved from their houses worthy temporary existence conditions. And we must do everything possible as quickly as possible.

Dear members of the Government! The day before yesterday our government delegation held another round of negotiations with the Russian Federation. We along with Volodymyr Putin decided to hold such a meeting of the Heads of the Governments to clarify milestones of our joint projects and speed up work where necessary. I would like to inform you that the level of understanding, dynamics of our relations is very high.

Cooperation is restoring in all industries and brining results. You know that over five months 2010 the trade turnover between Ukraine and Russia has doubled. Issues that were frozen or reached conflict phase are solving.

We have noted that today there are no fundamental disagreements between our states. We are intensively signing agreements in the energy sector that will ensure stable and efficient functioning and development of our nuclear energy, hydropower industry, stable supply, transit of oil and gas.

We have agreed to make an independent market assessment of Ukrainian and Russian aircraft enterprises to explore a problem of the integration of these high-tech facilities. The Head of the Russian Government has instructed to speed up the inspection of our meat and dairy enterprises to open the Russian market for them as well as to tackle infrastructure problems of the city of Sevastopol.

So talks were fruitful, the parties’ interests are completely accommodated. It is obvious that mutually beneficial economic cooperation is quite rapidly developing. This is the recipe for Ukraine to overcome the crisis.

Colleagues! Much of the issues on today's meeting agenda of the Government aimed at strengthening social protection and improving the health of Ukrainian citizens. The Government has developed a new version of the law of Ukraine on prevention of HIV infection, legal and social protection of citizens. The bill will improve the prevention of this disease, especially among the youth, to prevent the spread of the infection and strengthen the social protection of population and health workers facing this disease. Among other measures: to increase assistance to children established diagnosis of HIV infection, also made amendments to the law of Ukraine "On safety and quality of foods”, much attention will be drawn to the needs of disabled persons.

Today, we are to adopt the order of housing purchasing for the vision and hearing impaired persons at the expense of the state budget. Let me remind you that the problem is becoming worse, because in 2009 the Government has allocated nothing for this problem. There is also on the agenda a draft resolution that foresees the creation of new jobs to develop employment in coal mining regions. This will reduce social tension in the labor market of Volyn, Donetsk, Zhytomyr, Kirovograd, Luhansk, Lviv and Cherkasy regions. Among the decisions of the Government that we are to consider there are changes of the requirements for entities that provide employment assistance abroad. We want to strengthen the responsibility of such mediators for concluding such a contract in accordance with the ILO standards. This document was also approved by representatives of all-Ukrainian trade unions and their associations as well as all-Ukrainian unions of employers.

We continue to simplify the various regulatory procedures. We have to consider, in addition, draft resolutions on development, coordination, approval, amendment and repeal of building standards and improvement of cargo registration procedure in containers arriving in Ukraine with water modes of transport.

So thank you for your attention, start working.

Do members of the Government have any comments, suggestions to the agenda? Don’t you? I would like to add one issue to the agenda: "On establishment of the State Agency for Management of National Projects", we will consider it at the end of the meeting.