China started a ten-day project for coal shipment on the country's rail lines recovering from the ongoing snow chaos, the Ministry of Railways said Friday.

The ministry will make sure the daily average loading of coal exceeds 40,000 cars during the ten days. There will be a minimum of one million tons of coal transported daily on the Datong-Qinhuangdao rail line on average, said Zhao Chunlei, a ministry official in charge of train dispatching, at a press conference.

The move aims to rapidly alleviate the hunger for coal needed to generate power in some areas of the country.

The freezing weather, the worst in five decades in many places, has hit 19 provincial regions since mid-January, paralyzing traffic, straining electrical supply and threatening human life.

Power facilities in the eastern Zhejiang, Fujian, Anhui and Jiangxi provinces are partly damaged, while supply in the central Hunan Province and the southwestern Guizhou Province remained unstable, the National Development and Reform Commission said in a statement on Friday.

Meanwhile, electricity plants faced a lack of fuel due to the blocked transport of coal in the severe weather.

The main coal-producing regions, such as Shanxi, Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia, have geared up coal shipping to the southern disaster-hit areas that are much less rich in resources.

(Xinhua News Agency February 2, 2008)