The Severny airport in Grozny, republican capital, will re-open for daytime flights in the first quarter-year 2005, if only air safety is certain, reassured Dmitry Kalinin, federal Transport Ministry infrastructure development board chief.
A corporate contest is on for airport repairs. The ministry will sum it up to appoint a general contractor on September 9, he went on.
Bridges and highways are top reconstruction priorities alongside the Severny, with the closest attention to the Caucasus federal highway, an essential route. This and next year's schedule envisages it rebuilt along a total 121 kilometers, with 23 bridges to repair.
The number of Chechen residents on the cellular phone is expected to hit a 20,000 mark next month, said Dmitry Milovantsev, federal Deputy Minister of Information Technologies and Communications. Secret services have permitted for today to increase the number of clients to 10,000, as against 2,500 for mid-July, he announced.
However, an official procedure has not been coordinated to this day for Chechen civilians to obtain cellular phone permits, so the population cannot use the phones for now, said Alu Alkhanov, republican presidential hopeful, who was attending the conference.
Gherman Gref, federal Minister of Economic Development and Trade, and commission head, replied to that by ordering the Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications to simplify the permit issuance arrangements as much as possible.
As he was addressing the conferees, Mr. Gref said Chechnya was beginning to keep pace with its schedule for lost private property compensation payments. 5,225 households received compensations last month alone, and another 1,060 have received them since August's start. A weekly 2,500-3,000 compensations will be paid since Monday next, he added.
