Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen has called on local authorities and government ministries to be ready to distribute water to farmers around the country due to the ongoing shortage in the Kingdom’s reservoirs, The Phnom Penh Post reported.
In a posting on his Facebook page on Sunday, Hun Sen said if people had trouble contacting local authorities, individual farmers should post their requests for help directly to his Facebook account, along with their names, phone numbers and locations.
Chan Yutha, a spokesman for the Ministry of Water Resources, said that the government is using 600,000 litres of fuel set in reserve to run 300 pumps to distribute water in hard-hit areas.
He said that water in the Mekong River is very low this year, only 7 metres. Therefore, the water could not flow into natural reservoirs or other main sources of stock waters.
Yutha said since the government is well prepared the crop collection this year was unlikely to be bad. He estimated this year’s rice production at around 99 per cent of the target of about 2.5 million hectares. He believed the drought would hit only 4,000 – 5,000 acres.
However, Ian Thomas, an adviser with the Mekong River Commission, said provinces in Northwest Cambodia and those bordering the Tonle Sap lake have been badly hit this year, which will lead to water shortages and food insecurity on a greater scale than the government predicted, he said.
Official rice figures are “underestimating the damage that was done”, Thomas said.