You're reading: Hroisman: Liberated Ukraine eastern regions 70-90 percent ready for winter

The level of readiness of housing and utilities economy of Ukraine for the heating season 2014-2015 on the terrorist liberated territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions today is 70-90 percent.

Such data was reported by the Deputy Prime Minister and Regional Development, Construction, Housing and Utilities Economy Minister Volodymyr Hroisman during a conference with the local authorities on Thursday.

In these terms the minister ordered a local leadership to completely prepare housing and utilities sector on the mentioned territories for the forthcoming heating season, a report on the conference said.

Hroisman said that residential areas of other country’s regions had a 100% technical level of readiness for the heating season 2014/2015 as of Oct. 2.

The date of the heat supply launch depends on the weather conditions: the ministry will order the regional state administrations to switch of the consumers to the centralized heating if there are forecasts about a sharp decline of the average daily temperature.

The deputy premier also stressed that it was important, for the stable passage of the 2014-2015 heating season, for natural gas to be saved or substituted with other fuels, due to gas shortages and the need for timely and full payments for the consumed gas, the report said.

‘We’ll be ready to respond to any development of events. But how critical the situation is depends on every region, every residential area and every consumer,’ Hroisman said, adding that today the government is calculating various options for getting through the heating season.

According to the ministry, as of Oct. 2, apart from Luhansk and Donetsk regions, in general 171,000 houses of all property forms are ready for the 2014/2015 heating season, as are 36,200 social sector facilities (17,800 schools, 13,000 kindergartens and 6,400 hospitals).

As for the provision of heating – 21,700 boiler rooms and 5,500 thermal stations were prepared; was were 1,840 waterworks and 2,361 sewerage stations, and 197 water and 710 sewage treatment works.

Besides, 5,700 units of road-bridge infrastructure have been prepared for work in the autumn-winter period, in particular, 4,500 units of specialized machinery have been prepared; along with 790,000 tonnes of sanding material and reagents, the ministry said.

The ministry also said that in general 505 boilers were reconstructed, 669 boilers replaced and 246 underwent major repairs on the eve of the forthcoming season. Besides, 1,080 kilometers of water, 370 kilometers of heat and 345 kilometers of sewerage systems have been replaced.