Natural Resources Ministry sets up emergency situations commission

The Russian Ministry of Natural Resources established an emergencysituations commission. The decree about the commission's establishment,which was signed by Natural Resources Minister Vitaly Artyukhov, came intoforce today, the press service of the Ministry reported. The commissionwill organize engineering and technical operations aimed at improving thesecurity of potentially dangerous facilities supervised by the Ministry.The commission will also develop a program of protecting citizens, materialand cultural values and environment against natural and technologicaldisasters. Among the major tasks that the Natural Resources Ministry wasassigned with are also securing the readiness of the Ministry's departmentsto participate in recovery operations, organizing rescue operations andparticipating in efforts aimed at securing social protection of people whosuffered as a result of disasters. The emergency situations commission willbe headed by Senior Deputy Minister of Natural Resources ValeryRoshchupkin. At the first stage the commission will create expert taskforces in a number of the Ministry's departments to work out proposalsregarding the prevention and recovery from disasters. .