President Juan Manuel Santos announced Wednesday that Colombia has distributed $309 million (COP570 billion) to various departments, in order to mitigate the devastating impact of the rainy season, reports WRadio.
Governors of the districts most affected have received $87 million to put towards humanitarian relief, while $49 million has been given for the rehabilitation of public works. The Ministry of Agriculture, presiding over the industry most severely affected by the weather, has been granted $173 million to begin the process of regeneration.
Within the next two weeks the board of the Reconstruction Fund will also meet “to start planning work on the issue of reconstruction,” explained the President, before emphasising the importance in transparency in the management of resources.
Dr. Londoño, the outgoing president of Bancolombia, will chair the meetings and has already met with three private companies that are “helping us to make this process completely transparent,” said Santos, before expressing his gratitude that Londoño has taken on this “immense responsibility.”
The Red Cross has also provided aid to around 23,000 people affected by the floods, primarily to those in the most remote and difficult to access areas, according to a Red Cross press release. The aid has come in the form of food, cooking utensils, and other health-related necessities.
“Our help is concentrated principally in the zones where we are developing our regular activities in order to attend to the humanitarian consequences of the armed conlfict,” said the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (CICR) delegation in Colombia, Christophe Beney.
The rainy season was the largest and most devastating that Colombia has witnessed in the last 40 years. According to official numbers, there are more than 2.2 million victims of the torrential rains that affected most of the country last year.