Premier Wen Jiabao has called on the governments and
departments around the country to help the people and local
governments around the Three Gorges reservoir.
Speaking at a national conference on the country's coordinated
support of the Three Gorges area held here on Monday, Wen said
other provinces and regions should do more to help resettle people
who were displaced by the reservoir.
More than a million people, who mainly lived in 20 counties of
southwest China's Chongqing Municipality and central China's Hubei Province, were moved to make way for the
Three Gorges Dam Project which submerged their lands.
The conference was urged to provide stronger support to the
reservoir area so it can develop its own agriculture, tourism and
processing industries and create more jobs for those who had to
move.
More support is required for infrastructure construction,
pollution control, environmental protection, and development of a
recycling-based economy of the area.
Thirty-eight agreements involving economic cooperation and
investment worth 28.3 billion yuan were signed at the
conference
Governments and departments outside the Three Gorges area
started to provide support for the region in 1992, a year before
construction of the world's largest hydropower project began.
Since then, more than 27 billion yuan in aid from across the
country has been offered to the area.
At the conference Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan urged a stable fund that is
strictly supervised be established.
To better help the affected area the government should guide
projects, funds, technologies and talents, and let the market,
society and enterprises play their roles in boosting the
self-development of the reservoir area, said officials.
The water level in the reservoir reached the 156-meter mark on
October 27 and will eventually reach 175 meters in 2009, when the
Three Gorges project is finally completed.
The Three Gorges Project, including a 2,309-meter-long and
185-meter-high dam and 26 generators, is built in three phases on
the middle reaches of the Yangtze. The dam is now producing power
and aiding flood-control and river navigation.
(Xinhua News Agency December 5, 2006)