Dry spell may continue until October

Dry spell may continue until October

JAKARTA (JP): Weather experts are predicting that the current
dry spell will last until October in most parts of Indonesia,
although some areas may begin to see rain in September.

Karjoto Sontokusumo, the chairman of the Meteorological and
Geophysics Agency, said on Saturday that rain might start falling
in 17 percent of the country in September, but for most of the
nation, rain will not come until October.

Karjoto acknowledged that the current dry season is one of the
worst to hit Indonesia in recent years. He ranked it on the same
level as that experienced in 1991 when many regions, including
the nation's main rice growing areas, saw a crippling water
crisis.

This year, the dry season came earlier than expected in most
parts of Java and West Nusa Tenggara. The water supply in many
parts of Java is reported to be critical, causing massive rice
crop failures and threatening more.

Karjoto was speaking after attending the closing ceremony of
the 17th meeting of the Sub-committee on Meteorology and
Geophysics of the Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN).

Karjoto said that all delegations of member countries agreed
to forge cooperation in research on meteorology, climatology and
geophysics.

"Singapore is responsible for conducting a meteorological
project, Thailand will coordinate a research project in the field
of meteorology and cloud-seeding, while Indonesia will be
responsible for geophysics research," he said.

ASEAN groups Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, the
Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

Karjoto said the sub-committee would need to set up a fund to
carry out the projects. Several donor countries, such as Japan,
Australia and the United States, and financial institutions, such
as World Bank and Asian Development Bank, have agreed to finance
some of the projects.

Sub-committee Chairman Patipat Patvivatsiri of Thailand said
ASEAN and the European Union would also conduct a joint
scientific project to assess natural hazards in Southeast Asia.

"The project, whose funding will come from the European Union
countries, is expected to be underway this year to improve our
capability in minimizing negative impacts of natural hazards in
this region," he said. (rms)