Houses for 3,000 people left homeless by the April 6 earthquake in the Abruzzo capital of L'Aquila and surrounding villages will be ready by mid September, Premier Silvio Berlusconi said Thursday.
''Today 63,000 people are not in their homes,'' he told the national retail services' association Confesercenti, referring to those being accommodated in tent camps and other temporary accommodation.
''Some 53% of houses are inhabitable but people don't have the courage to return because the wave of aftershocks continues, and nobody has the courage to push them into doing so,'' he said.
''We've suggested to people still in tents that they go and have a holiday by the sea,'' where the government would house them in hotels, ''because we don't want anyone still in tents in the summer''.
The premier said the final houses would be made available to earthquake survivors ''by the end of November, before it starts getting cold''.
On Friday Berlusconi is scheduled to reopen ''65%'' of L'Aquila's hospital, which failed to hold up to the quake despite being theoretically quake proof.
He will also present university degrees and school certificates to the families of some of the students killed in the quake, which claimed nearly 300 lives.
Abruzzo Governor Gianni Chiodi said Thursday the region and the government had agreed to an investment package for infrastructure and to relaunch economic development worth six billion euros, 1.7 of which could be spent in the next three years.
Minor seismic activity in the region has continued since the main earthquake, with the most recent quake recorded on Wednesday between L'Aquila and Rome and measuring 2.1 on the Richter scale.
