Chinese Vice-Premier Hui Liangyu called on the nation's disaster relief departments to exert every effort to help those affected by severe weather and urged agriculture departments to ensure food supply as the Spring Festival approaches.
"Progress has been made against weather-related woes thanks to relief work. However, we can not afford to slack off, as disasters persist in some areas," he told a disaster relief teleconference.
He stressed putting people first and called on all parties concerned to take on their responsibilities. Stranded passengers should not be short of food, drink and basic medicine, he said.
The central treasury has appropriated relief funds of 293 million yuan (40.69 million U.S. dollars) to affected provinces including the Hubei, Jiangxi and Anhui provinces.
He urged meteorological departments to deliver accurate reports in time and use every channel to keep people well-informed.
Hui asked agriculture departments to help disaster-stricken farmers to restore devastated crops and farmlands.
The extreme weather had affected more than 77.86 million people in 14 provinces by 2 p.m. Monday. Direct economic losses were estimated at 22.09 billion yuan (about 3 billion U.S. dollars).
Some 800,000 passengers have been stranded in the southern city of Guangzhou, figures from the Railway Ministry showed. About 700,000 travelers had left the Guangzhou Railway Station as of Jan. 26 and 380,000 tickets for departures from Jan. 26 to Feb. 5 had been refunded.
About 6.87 million hectares of crops were affected in 16 province-level areas as of Tuesday morning. Total crop failures were 735,333 ha.
The supply of coal for power generation had fallen to 21.19 million tons. Severe coal shortages had cut generation capacity by42.12 million kilowatts so far.
Source: Xinhua
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