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Few Chinese flood victims claim insurance on losses |
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21:44, July 24, 2007 |
Victims of the floods along China''s Huaihe and Yangtze rivers have claimed less than six percent of the losses inflicted from insurance companies, as insurance remains a new thing to most Chinese farmers.
Losses of 680 million yuan (90.7 million U.S. dollars) had been claimed by flood victims by July 15, said Yuan Li, spokesman with China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC), on Tusday. But the total losses from the floods had hit 12 billion yuan (1.6 billion U.S.dollars) by July 16, according to the Office of the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters. Yuan attributed the phenomenon to insufficient awareness of agricultural insurance and farmers'' underestimation of possible damage and disasters. Chinese farmers were much more vulnerable to disasters than urban dwellers as the government usually sacrificed relatively backward rural areas during flooding to protect the cities. The use of the Mengwa flood diversion area along the Huaihe River, for instance, forced 585,000 people to relocate. [1] [2]
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