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Norway's government to mull emergency supply centres

The proposal was adopted by Norway's parliament on Tuesday evening, and the government will investigate establishing emergency stores similar to those neighbouring Finland wants to adopt. Finland has set itself the goal of setting up 300 such stores by 2028. The Centre Party, the Progress Party, the Socialist Left Party, the Liberal Party, and the Labour Party supported Tuesday's proposal. The emergency supply centres will need to be able to run in the event of emergencies such as large-scale power outages, such as those seen across parts of Southern Europe last week. Once the government has conducted its investigation, it will report its findings to parliament. The proposal was adopted as part of a wider focus on emergency preparedness. Centre Party MP and former minister, Sandra Borch, who was among those who submitted the proposal, challenged Minister of Justice and Public Security Astri Aas-Hansen on why the government hadn't yet considered the shelters earlier. Aas-Hansen said it was because Norway had chosen solutions to potential problems different from Finland. 'When it comes to food preparedness and food supply, Norway and Finland have chosen different solutions. The government's goal is for all grocery stores to be operational even during crises. So that people can shop in their usual store,' he was reported as saying by the newspaper Nationen . Advertisement The Norwegian Directorate for Civil Protection (Norwegian: Direktoratet for samfunnssikkerhet og beredskap) already advises households have their own emergency supplies stocked. READ ALSO: The emergency supplies Norway's government wants you stock Earlier this year, the government said it wanted to reintroduce the mandatory construction of air raid shelters in new buildings. The same building regulation had previously been in place until 1998 but was axed following the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. According to government estimates, the country currently has enough air raid shelters to accommodate around 45 percent of its population.