Croatia's government has reached an agreement reached with telecommunication companies to boost signal strength in the quake-hit areas of Sisak-Moslavina County so that students there could normally follow online classes, a state official said on Wednesday.

Bernard Gasic, a senior official at the government’s Central State Office for Digital Society, gave an interview for the state radio on Wednesday in which he called on people in those areas who have experienced poor internet and mobile network coverage to contact the task force dealing with the aftermath of the 29 December earthquake so it could help them solve the problem in cooperation with telecommunications operators.

Gasic said that his office, in cooperation with the state’s Faculty of Geodesy and the State Geodesy Office had launched a geo-information system to help the task force follow all the reconstruction activities on the ground.

The system also keeps track and plots data on structural engineers’ damage estimates as well as firefighters’ and the police force’s activities and will help organize food deliveries. The application is currently used only by the state’s task force dealing with the quake, but in the long run it is meant to be used to help people collect information needed to apply for state-subsidised reconstruction, Grsic said.