Iran’s President Stresses Providing Immediate Assistance to People Affected by Floods
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi highlighted the need for immediately helping those affected by recent floods in the country’s southern provinces.
Speaking on Wednesday in the meeting of the cabinet, the president said, “In the floods, agricultural fields have been damaged and it is necessary to provide the necessary facilities to farmers to compensate the damage and the Minister of Agricultural Jihad should follow this issue closely.”
Raisi also stressed the need to provide immediate assistance to the people hit by the floods and said, “In this regard, the government has stepped in with its full capacity and it is necessary to take care of people’s situation.”
On Tuesday, the president ordered his energy minister to visit the country’s provinces hardly hit by floods and follow up on the relief operations underway in the affected areas.
He instructed Ali Akbar Mehrabian to draw up a report on the latest measures taken to help people in the southern province of Hormozgan as well as Sistan and Balouchestan Province in the southeast.
Meanwhile, the chief of staff of the president’s office Gholam Hossein Esmaeili made contacts on behalf of the president with the governors of the provinces of Fars, Sistan and Baluchestan, Hormozgan and Kerman to pursue the process of aid provision to people as soon as possible.
In the phone calls, the governors were tasked with estimating the damage inflicted on the residential areas so that the next cabinet meeting could decide on how to compensate people for their losses.
At least eight people have been killed and over a dozen others injured in rain-triggered flash floods in southern Iran, while heavy rains are expected to last until later this week.
“In the aftermath of the downpours and floods of the past few days in the southern regions of the country, we have seen an increase in casualties and deaths,” the spokesman for Iran’s emergency services Mojtaba Khaledi said on Tuesday.
“So far eight people have unfortunately died and two are still missing,” Khaledi said, adding that 14 others had been injured in the southern provinces.
Iran’s Red Crescent has “provided emergency accommodation for more than 3,000 people, and over 20,000 have received relief assistance,” its head of rescue and emergency operations Mehdi Valipour said.
“Houses have been flooded and infrastructure such as roads and communication systems have been damaged,” he said.