China's first method of gathering statistics on flood-control
efforts will soon be distributed by the State Flood Control and
Drought Relief Headquarters, an official said Saturday.
"This method will provide uniform standards for the headquarters
to monitor local governments' flood-control performances and offer
valuable references to future water conservancy construction," said
director Zhang Xu of the Headquarters' Drought Relief Division.
Over the past decades, the country has invested large sums of
money for the construction of dams and reservoirs and in training
official in flood control techniques. However, it's very difficult
to measure how this has helped prevent floods due to the inability
of getting statistics.
Therefore, in most cases, statistics were roughly drawn from
estimates, he said.
Since all local governments have established a system to hold
their administrative leaders responsible for their flood-control
affairs, Zhang believed many of them could expect hard reports on
the desk by the year end.
The method has been piloted in six provinces including Henan,
Shandong, Hubei and Anhui. It has been slightly modified to take
into consideration geographic and economic disparities among
regions.
Zhang said that the method would be mainly used to calculate
direct economic effect caused by flood-control efforts. Indirect
economic effect or effects on society and ecology were
excluded.
(Xinhua News Agency July 24, 2004)