Speaking at AK Party’s Parliamentary Group Meeting, Erdoğan said: “We will revive the quake-hit region in solidarity with our citizens living there. We will give priority in construction and amelioration works in the region to our firms and citizens, particularly the youth.”

“It is not possible for us to prevent earthquakes, the reality of the geography we are living in,” Erdoğan stressed and added: “What falls to us is to first of all make necessary preparations and build safe residential areas with their pre-quake infrastructure, roads, hospitals, schools, houses and workplaces. And what falls to us following an earthquake is to carry out the fastest and the most effective emergency aid works, heal the wounds and compensate for the destruction. In both areas, our country has made a progress to an extent impossible to compare with the past.”

“We are planning to build 468,031 houses in the quake-hit region”

Stating that debris removal works had started in all the provinces where search and rescue works had been completed, Erdoğan noted: “We witnessed during our last visit that thousands of heavy equipment and trucks had been working uninterruptedly to clear our cities of rubble. We have furnished the temporary shelters firstly with tents, and then mainly with containers, and started to transfer our citizens to these places. We are also building temporary areas for shopping in order for the trade in our city centers to continue. According to the latest works, we are planning to build a total of 468,031 houses, 392,350 of them in cities and 75,681 in villages, in the region hit by the earthquakes.”

“We will revive the quake-hit region in solidarity with our citizens living there. We will give priority in construction and amelioration works in the region to our firms and citizens, particularly the youth,” he said. (ILKHA)