South China's Hunan province is embarking on a five-year program to reinforce more than 5,000 unsafe reservoirs that a senior official described as "time-bombs" in severe weather.

Heavy snows this winter had highlighted safety risks with 5,621 reservoirs, said Zhang Shuofu, head of the provincial water conservancy department.

The province would spend 6.7 billion yuan (938 million U.S. dollars), including 2.2 billion yuan (308 million U.S. dollars) from the central government, to reinforce the reservoirs. said Zhang.

Forty-two percent of Hunan's 13,326 reservoirs had problems, including construction damage and aging, facility malfunctions and instability of dams, said Zhang.

"Dangerous reservoirs are the weakest part of the provincial flood prevention work as every reservoir with problems is a time-bomb in flood seasons," he said.

Hunan vice governor Xu Minghua said, "It is hard to predict the influence of the snows on the coming flood season. We're seeing more extreme weather, which could trigger disasters at any time."

The central government had invested 1.78 billion yuan (249 million U.S. dollars) to reinforce 210 reservoirs since 1998, Xu said.

"There is still a long way to go," Xu said.

Disasters caused by prolonged low temperatures, icy rain and heavy snow in southern China in the past month have killed 129 people. Direct losses were estimated at 151.6 billion yuan (20.8 billion U.S. dollars).

(Xinhua News Agency March 1, 2008)