Construction Minister Ivan Paladina said on Thursday that "all types of post-earthquake reconstruction" would start by the end of the summer and that "seismic retrofitting" was expected to start over the next year, state agency Hina said. Paladina was speaking about efforts to kickstart the long overdue rebuilding efforts in areas hit by two large quakes in Zagreb and around Petrinja in 2020.
Presenting a plan to step up the reconstruction, he told the press a priority was to pay out monetary aid to citizens for reconstruction not involving seismic retrofitting so that it could be nearly completed over the next year.
“By the end of the summer, works are expected to start on hundreds of construction sites,” Paladina said, adding that this includes building replacement homes as well as starting the reconstruction of 1,000 homes over the next year.
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“These are optimistic goals but at the same time realistic. I stand behind them and we will do our best to achieve them.” The minister said his main job was opening construction sites and presenting concrete deadlines.
We are all together in the reconstruction process and reconstruction is the responsibility of us all, first and foremost mine, he said, adding that the reconstruction is an opportunity for all homeowners to raise the safety of their homes with considerable operational and financial support from the state.
Reconstruction is expected to be stepped up through more efficient and faster procurement by introducing generic cost estimates and framework agreements, reorganising the Reconstruction Fund, centralising reconstruction oversight, and taking into account disruptions on construction markets by more flexible price-setting.
“Procurement will be adapted to small and medium-sized enterprises in order to activate the whole construction industry,” Paladina said.
The adjustments from the plan to step up reconstruction will not slow down the processes under way and no citizen would be shortchanged in the realisation of the proposed changes, he added.
He said the speed of processing citizens’ reconstruction applications was not satisfactory as only 15% had been processed to date.
“We must advance in terms of organisation so that the processing is at least two to three times faster,” he said, adding that the Reconstruction Fund will be reorganised in the next couple of months.
