The President of Georgia held a contingency meeting today. The Prime Minister and the representatives of Government attended it. MikheilSaakashvili requested full information concerning the emerged situation and got interested in the details of the ongoing process of the rehabilitation works. The President of Georgia expressed his condolences to the families of those who died during the natural disaster. The Minister of Regional Development and Infrastructure RamazNikolaishvili noted that the quantity of precipitation that fell to the ground in an hour period is usually supposed to fall in a month. It caused the damage of 24 parts of Rikoti pass, five of which reached the critical edge. RamazNikolaishvili said that a pipe of big capacity was installed in this region that helped to accelerate the process of the rehabilitation works. As he said from these 24 parts 21 would be restored in two days and thus the traffic on Rikoti pass will be improved.

As the Prime Minister stated 360 equipment units and 1100 people work in order to fully rehabilitate the road in the nearest future. MikheilSaakashvili noted it is expected to host a big number of tourists in Georgia this year and if the road is not rehabilitated many families will lose their incomes.

"The resort season and intensive flow from Tbilisi and neighboring countries - Armenia, Azerbaijan has already started. It is necessary to restore this road, because many families will lose their incomes. It is good to hear that rehabilitation works are going on successfully. A huge disaster hit Georgia and we even have victims. It is good that we reacted on time and Rikoti pass did not fully collapsed. In condition when rehabilitation works are taking place in the tunnel the collapse of this road would have caused termination of traffic. This would have been an unimaginable catastrophe. You see what it meansto have resources; construction is taking place everywhere, we have people and equipment. This helped us survive. This type of disasters happens all around the world - weather got terrible everywhere. The equipment that was mobilized around us helped us to avoid the major catastrophe. It is true that we temporarily terminated those projects that were in the phase of fulfillment, but we avoided a far bigger misfortune", the President of Georgia stated.

MikheilSaakashvili got interested in the problem of electricity and natural gas provided in those regions and requested information on the material conditions of the families living within the region that suffered after the disaster; it is very important to help those people who suffered greatly after the disaster. As he said the State must help these people as much as it can before the beginning of the resort season, otherwise they may lose all their income.