The country's top leadership yesterday said restoring power supply and normalizing transport movement in areas lashed by the worst snowfall and winter rain in more than half a century was still a big challenge.

The warning came as the National Meteorological Center forecast over the weekend that the inclement weather, which has killed at least 60 people and left millions of others facing a cold, dark Lunar New Year, could persist for another week.

A meeting of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Political Bureau Standing Committee, chaired by General Secretary Hu Jintao, studied the ongoing rescue and current relief work yesterday.

It was the second top-level meeting in a week to review the havoc caused by the bad weather before Spring Festival, the country's most important holiday.

"We have to be clear minded that the inclement weather and severe disaster will continue to plague certain regions in the south," said a statement issued after the meeting. "Relief work will continue to face challenges, posing a tough task."

The meeting called on provincial and other local governments, as well as officials, to continue prioritizing relief and rescue work. It called for intensified efforts to normalize the movement of transport and restore power supply in the snow-hit areas.

Passengers are still stuck in Guangzhou, Shanghai and Nanchang, capital of Jiangxi Province, and some other places, and the chances of many of them traveling back home for Spring Festival looks remote. Guangzhou has highest number of stranded passengers.

Nineteen provinces and regions are under the grip of the worst winter weather for the past three weeks. It has destroyed 223,000 houses and damaged another 862,000, and caused a direct economic loss of 53.8 billion yuan (US$7.47 billion), the Ministry of Civil Affairs said.

Transport, however, is limping back to normal. Many of the airports that had been forced to shut down - such as those in Hangzhou and Ningbo in Zhejiang Province - have been re-opened, National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) spokesperson Li Pumin said.

Train services are "improving, though slowly". And there's fear that in some areas it could "be put to further test by the continuing bad weather", Li said.

But top economic planners said the country had reversed a sharp decline in coal reserves. There was enough coal on Saturday to generate electricity for the entire country for the next eight days.

Power plants in the Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan triangle and Shanghai had enough coal to generate electricity for "less than seven days", Li said.

(China Daily / Xinhua News Agency February 4, 2008)