The Star

Monday August 10, 2009

Kuching braces for water rationing

By STEPHEN THEN

MIRI: More areas in Sarawak are facing water rationing, including its capital city Kuching, unless there is heavy rain soon, said Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Dr George Chan Hong Nam.

He said to date over 100,000 people were affected by water woes and the problem was getting more acute by the day.

“The rural areas in Sarikei and Mukah divisions in central Sarawak were initially hit, but the problems has now spread to southern Sarawak, hitting the state capital as well,” he said yesterday.

Kuching City has a population of about 500,000.

“More than 100,000 are in dire need of water now. It has become very dry. The most critical areas that need attention are Sarikei and Kuching divisions.

“Water rationing has already started in Sarikei. We will carry out rationing in Kuching as well soon. The water shortage is critical, even more critical than the forest fires and haze situation,’’ he said in an interview.

Dr Chan, who is state Disaster Relief Committee chairman, said rationing could not be avoided because the water levels in rivers and dams throughout the state were rapidly falling, some reaching alarmingly levels.

On the delay in cloud-seeding efforts, he said the aircraft was already on standby, but the operations could not be carried out because of the absence of rain clouds.

“Cloud-seeding will not work with low cloud density. For now, we must conserve the remaining water that we have in the dams and rivers as much as possible.

“That is why water rationing is the only option until we can induce some rain,” he stressed.

Dr Chan, who is also state Industrial Development Minister and state Agriculture Modernisation Minister, said the forest and peat fires raging in northern Sarawak were making the situation worse.

“The fires are spreading fast because the ground is dry,” he added.

Dr Chan, who visited the fire sites near the Sarawak-Brunei trans-boundary bridge, said the fires were getting worse.

He appealed to the public to stop all forms of open-burning, adding that without their help, the fires, haze and water-shortage problems would only deteriorate further.

More than 3,000ha of forests and peat land have already been ravaged by fires near the border, with another 1,000ha still on fire, causing massive air pollution.