It was reported that more than 4,000 bridges in Uzbekistan are in the midst of repair.

Today, there are more than 14,000 bridges in Uzbekistan and 68 percent of them, i.e., 9,900 were built in the last century between 1960-1970.  As a result of this, more than 4,000 bridges are currently under repair.

Shuhrat Nazarov, the deputy chairman of the State Committee of Highways of Uzbekistan, gave information about this at the 35th plenary session of the Oliy Majlis, which is currently taking place.

"We have developed a 4-year program for the reconstruction and repair of these bridges.  1300 bridges will be repaired and rebuilt.  This year, we organized the repair of 131 bridges within the framework of this program," says Shuhrat Nazarov.

According to him, 314 of the largest bridges in our Republic were built over rivers from the bottom of which minerals are extracted.

"Today, 26 of them are under repair.  The reason for this is the haphazard mining of sand-gravel mixtures from the bottom of the river where the bridges are located.  As a result, the reinforced concrete foundations of the bridges have weakened.  It is also related to the lowering of the river level," said the deputy chairman of the committee.

Nazarov said that to solve the existing problems, dams were built this year to regulate the river water level under 5 large bridges.  However, he did not dwell on what measures were taken against those who dug the sand-gravel mixtures indiscriminately.  Subsequently, little funds have been allocated to solve the problem of only these 5 bridges.

"A total of 3.5 billion soms have been allocated from the budget for regulating dams," says Shuhrat Nazarov.