Peru's President vows to improve ability to withstand natural disasters

Peru's President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said Friday his government is working hard to strengthen its humanitarian response capacities after the floods that recently affected 11 Peruvian regions.
According to Kuczynski, the country needs to improve its transportation infrastructure system and protect rivers from natural disasters which occur in the country's highly complex geography.
The president announced that a new state policy was needed to fight such disasters, including updated prevention measures, in order to offer greater levels of protection to Peru's 31 million people.
"The best defense for the country is internal defense, which allows citizens to feel protected," said Kuczynski during an inspection of new planes for the Peruvian Air Force, which will help cover the blighted areas.
Peru recently began a full evaluation of the material damage and reconstruction costs of all the infrastructure affected by the combined fury of floods and landslides in the 11 regions.
The country's National Emergency Operations Center (COEN) said that these disasters, sparked by the El Niño weather phenomenon, had damaged 210,000 buildings, 5,796km of roadways and collapsed 258 bridges.

Source: Xinhua