Hanoi (VNA) – PrimeMinister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has assigned the Ministry of Finance to allocate morethan 4,303 tonnes of rice from the national reserve for residents affected byrecent storms and floods in three central provinces.

Accordingly, 3,000 tonnes of ricewill be provided for Ha Tinh province, 303 tonnes for Nghe An province and1,000 tonnes for Binh Dinh province.

The PM asked the Ministry of Labour,Invalids and Social Affairs to prepare information and data for reports while thePeople’s Committees of the three provinces to promptly receive and distributethe allocated rice to right people in line with regulations.

Natural disasters have claimed 280lives and caused a total loss of approximately 29.9 trillion VND (close to 1.29billion USD) to Vietnam since the beginning of this year, according to theNational Steering Committee for Natural Disaster Prevention and Control.

The natural disasters also injured856 people and left 66 others unaccounted for. Torrential rains, floods andlandslides collapsed over 3,420 houses, damaged over 327,700 and submergednearly 509,800 others, affecting livelihoods of millions of people.

The country has so far recorded 13typhoons entering the East Sea, 114 flash floods and landslides, 86 earthquakesand 264 thunderstorms and whirlwinds while drought, saltwater intrusion andriver and coastal erosion have wreaked havoc across the Mekong Delta provinces.

Typhoon Vamco, the 13th storm toenter the East Sea this year, has so far caused 24 people in central Vietnam tosuffer injuries.

Seven houses collapsed and more than7,500 others were damaged or had their roofs blown away. The tropical stormalso sank and destroyed 27 vessels and eroded close to 39km of riverbank andsea dykes./.