All houses covered by the programme of non-structural reconstruction in the earthquake-affected areas of Petrinja and Glina should be renovated before the start of the heating season, with construction work currently underway on eight apartment buildings in Petrinja and four in Glina.

The value of the reconstruction contracts is estimated at 944 million kuna, it was said at a meeting of the task force in charge of dealing with the consequences of the December 2020 earthquake in Sisak-Moslavina County.

Gordan Hanzek of the Central State Office for Reconstruction and Housing said at the meeting that non-structural repair work had been completed on 3,222 houses and another 223 that had been repaired by their owners, who were compensated with 6.63 million kuna for that purpose.

Work is still underway on 670 houses, and judging by the dynamic of reconstruction work so far, all family homes from the programme of non-structural reconstruction will be completed before the start of the heating season, Hanzek said.

Speaking of the construction of replacement homes, he said that so far 87 contracts had been signed and that work was underway on 76 houses. The process of selecting contractors to build an additional 260 houses has been completed and contracts will be signed soon, he said.

A tender for the seismic retrofitting of housing units will be published in early September. Fifty contracts have been signed for the removal of family houses as a precondition for construction work. So far, around 2,500 units have been removed.

Construction work is also underway on eight apartment buildings in Petrinja and four in Glina, and contracts are to be signed for the construction of two more buildings in Glina and one in Dvor, it was said.

The task force noted that contracts signed under all reconstruction programmes were worth 944 million kuna, plus an additional 469 million kuna envisaged by ongoing tender processes, which is a total of 1.413 billion kuna.

Contracts have also been signed for 4.4 billion kuna from the EU Solidarity Fund for the reconstruction and construction of public facilities and infrastructure.

Deputy Prime Minister Tomo Medved called on all stakeholders in the reconstruction process to step up their activities, notably regarding construction work on housing units whose owners or tenants are still staying in housing containers or mobile homes.