Ukraine slates UAH 3B for farmland demining this year

This was reported on national television by the director of the Humanitarian Demining Center (HDC), Volodymyr Baida, Ukrinform reports.

“There’s quite significant progress in the program. Over the entire period, we have already received 426 applications, covering more than 14,000 hectares of farmland (previously, only 3,000 was cleared in three years). Sixty-five auctions have already been held, contracts have been signed for a total amount of UAH 835 million under the program. As for the cleared territory, more than 1,500 hectares have already been cleared this year,” he said.

According to the HDC director, this year, UAH 3 billion has been allocated for the program.

“Farmers are much more active this year… Last year, only eight of the 85 operators participated in the bidding, but now there’s nearly 20,” Baida noted.

He specified that out of 235 applications filed this year, 110 were rejected over the lack of a non-technical survey of land plots in question.

“This is the first stage that a farmer has to go through in order to submit the land plot for compensation and recognize it as presumably contaminated, so that specialists can first survey it,” the official explained, emphasizing that humanitarian demining is done in line with international standards.

As Ukrinform reported, on April 23, the Ministry of Economy stated that most applications requesting compensation for farmland demining failed to meet the requirements.