Türkiye to launch national ‘risk shield’ project

ANKARA

Türkiye will launch a comprehensive project to protect the country against the disasters with the participation of government officials and scientists in the aftermath of devastating earthquakes, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said, underlining the need for bi-partisan strategic and a collective mind to this end.

“A preliminary meeting of the Türkiye National Risk Shield model will be held on Friday [March 3]. It will be run by our Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change Minister Murat Kurum,” Erdoğan said in his weekly address to the Justice and Development Party (AKP) group at the Parliament on March 1.

Erdoğan underlined the need for a bi-partisan strategic mind to mitigate the impacts of the disasters as Türkiye is a country of earthquakes, saying “We need a new vision to carry out pre-disaster efforts and post-disaster works through a citizen-based understanding. We are firmly making this issue a matter of politics. We are planning to build earthquake-resilient cities for our people.”

The national risk shield will specify the risk areas and potential disasters so that necessary measures will be taken to prevent devastating damage to the people, he informed.

Stressing that his government, in the past 20 days, exerted efforts for urban transformation and re-building 93,000 buildings İstanbul alone though these works have often been interrupted by the legal processes launched by the opposition parties, President Erdoğan said, informing that they will take new legal steps to make urban transformation much more efficient in the next parliament before the fall.

“They stood against our efforts for urban transformation. And you see the result. If they would allow us, we would have already accomplished the transformation,” Erdoğan stated. “As we have promised to hand over new and safe houses to the earthquake victims, we now promise that we will finish urban transformation projects within a few years,” he vowed.

To the contrary of the opposition parties, the only agenda of the government is to heal the wounds of the earthquake and deliver better conditions for the victims, the president said, stressing that he will respond to the criticisms of the oppositional leader when the right time comes. “For now, we are only making note. We will expose what they did when the time comes,” he stated.

The government and relevant state institutions have already started works for the reconstruction of low-rise and intact buildings in the earthquake-hit provinces, Erdoğan said, highlighting that a special commission has been set up for carrying out renovation of historical and cultural sites in this area.

He also informed that the government will continue to give financial assistance to those who have lost their homes and decide to leave for different cities in rented houses. “Some 1.4 million people now live in tents and 34,000 in containers,” Erdoğan said, stressing all necessary action is taken for bettering life conditions of the survivors.