KIEV, July 28 – Lawmakers on Thursday will hold an emergency session to approve measures that increase spending to repair damage caused on Sunday by the worst flooding in a century, parliamentary Speaker Arseniy Yatseniuk said.

The government may need between 1 billion hryvnias and 1.6 billion hryvnias to compensate for the damage, including repairing bridges and other infrastructure, compared with 200 million hryvnias that is currently available.

“The lawmakers must get together to approve the law on emergency situations and to approve budget amendments,” Yatseniuk said after a meeting of the National Security and Defense Council.

Yushchenko declared an emergency in six Ukrainian regions that had suffered from rainstorms and the worst flooding in a century, but Parliament must act within three days to approve them, according to the law.

The difficulty of holding the emergency session of Parliament is that most of lawmakers have been spending time on vacations, many of them overseas, and to get them together in Thursday will be a challenge.

Parliament is officially in summer recess until Sept. 4.

Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has been seeking to hold the emergency session after lawmakers had failed to approve her amendments to the 2008 budget, freezing social payments that otherwise would have to increase.

Tymoshenko refused to incorporate Yushchenko’s request on increasing spending on defense, forcing the president to submit his own amendments in July. Yushchenko’s amendments also failed to be approved.

Tymoshenko said Monday that the government will seek to increase spending on infrastructure to repair damages caused by the flooding in western Ukraine, according to the government’s press service.

The rainstorms and floods over the past two days killed 22 people, including six children, in western regions, forcing the evacuation of 20,000 people, officials have said.

Tymoshenko has been seeking in July to call an emergency session of Parliament, by collecting 150 signatures from lawmakers, to approve the amendments, but her effort had failed.

Tymoshenko seeks to spend an extra 32 billion hryvnias that may be available in 2008 due to higher then expected economic growth, official have said. (tl/ez)