Drought forces fishermen off waters

Drought forces fishermen off waters

The Jakarta Post, Indramayu/Semarang/Surabaya

The current severe drought has depleted the water volume of 13
rivers in the West Java regency of Indramayu, one of the areas
hardest hit by the ongoing dry season, affecting about 8,000
fishermen who used to fish in the rivers.

Indramayu Regent Irianto M.S. Syafiuddin said on Friday that
the fishermen had been forced to fish in the neighboring regency
of Subang.

Another 1,300 fishermen in the regency have even stopped
working over the past week as the ice they need to keep their
catch fresh is no longer available.

A fisherman, Samir, said the ice producers could not meet the
demand due to the critical drop in water volume in the Cimanuk
river.

An employee of an ice maker, Mahmud Hidayat, said the company
used to take 96,000 liters of water from Cimanuk river every day.
The company has suspended operations, Mahmud said.

In Surabaya, the East Java administration is preparing to
conduct cloud seeding in the province to raise the water level of
local dams, which will help replenish the water supply to
farmland and to tap water companies.

Governor Imam Utomo said on Friday the cloud seeding would be
conducted sometime in October if the rainy season did not come.

"If by October we still have no rain, we will carry out the
cloud seeding," he said.

The provincial administration has also distributed water tanks
to areas severely hit by the drought.

In Demak, Central Java, visiting agriculture minister Bungaran
Saragih said the national rice stock would be sufficient despite
crop failure in some areas of the rice belt in Java.

"We know that crop failure has hit 90,000 hectares of farmland
in Java, but outside Java, agricultural land has increased by
420,000 hectares.

"Therefore, the national rice stock will remain at a safe
level," he said.

According to him, the present rice output will increase from
that of last year, but he did not elaborate.

"What we should do now is focus on how to help farmers whose
land is affected by the drought," he said.

This year's drought is the worst yet since the 1997 drought
that caused forest fires and rendered farmland unworkable.

The government estimated that this year's drought would leave
some 250,000 farmers unable to work their land.

Therefore, the government will help the farmers by
distributing free rice, and recruiting to repair irrigation
canals.

The program is expected to start on Monday.