 It's a problem for us to get water here, but still they send in a bill. It's like living in the Sahara Desert, you know, with no water. Rainfall was very, very, very low. Very low below normal. In fact, what we have been asking people to do, they should continue to do now. It will be more vigilant in terms of the use of water. Water which is used, I mean, for washing or even the rinsing of dishes, could be used to water your flowers. Hello everyone. This is Undersport, a production of the Government Information Service and the National Television Network, NTN. I am Primus Hutchinson. On this program, the current drought situation will be highlighted. Wasco officials have become rushing. The supply of water here at the John Compton Dam will be speak with Wasco officials as well as a representative of the Forestry Department regarding this critical situation. So stay with us as we go Undersport. We do have a drought monitor where we look at the rainfall pattern and we also look at rainfall projections in our region. Now what happened from last year, we noticed that during the dry season, what is traditionally the dry season, it was kind of very wet. We had way above normal rainfall and come around May, June, July, we noticed that the rainfall was very, very low, much below normal. From September last year, which is normally the rainfall period, there have been little rainfall or reduced amount of rainfall. Then we came into the dry period, January, and then people began to realize, well look, I mean with the dry period and we had no water during the rain period, we had no hurricanes which were expected to bring rains and to recharge our rivers, to recharge our water sources but that didn't happen. And according to the predictions from the Met Services, it indicates that rainfall patterns would still continue like that. In other words, a reduced amount of rainfall. In fact, the average rainfall over a 42-year period was about 222.2 millimeters and I think we only recorded somewhere around 50 or so. It is this lack of rainfall coupled with the baking sun that is responsible for drought conditions that brings about damage to the environment and misery to human beings. Even the birds have to scavenge for water and food. This river is normally vibrant. However, due to the drought, it barely trickles. Other rivers are not so fortunate as they reduce to sunbeds or may wrong beds. Water comes from rivers, right? We must conserve our trees for the rivers to actually produce the kind of water that we would need to sustain us. So, indiscriminate deforestation on private lands. I think it's one reason why we have a drought situation in Central Asia right now. So, I think we need to try and protect our forest resources in order to help the water situation. This is the John Compton Dam at full capacity. The lack of rainfall has reduced its storage capacity to critical levels. I think there has been a very wide public discussion on silitation in the dam. We are aware that there has been some silitation even at the very start, especially after Debbie. What I have found or I have learnt since being with Vasco is that the dam has two levels at which water is extracted from it and any water below that lowest point of extraction really cannot be used. My understanding is that all of the silt that's in the dam is actually at the bottom of this dam and below the lowest level that we can in fact extract water. If the silt begins to approach the bottom level that we can extract then it is timely to clear it out. At the moment, my understanding is that the silt has not yet approached the lowest level that we can remove water from the dam. So the usable water in the dam is still available to us. So in terms of preparing for a drought, generally we make sure that our storage systems are in order. We make sure that they work well. We check for any maintenance issues on the system. Also, we started making targets at which levels of water we would do certain things. These were agreed. These have been rolled out generally quite well. So as a result, we have reduced on the abstraction from the dam. We have reduced it to two levels already. We went down to 6.5 from the 8.9 and now we have gone further down to 5 million gallons. And the whole idea of that is to be able to sustain the water in the dam throughout the dry period. Our legislation makes provisions for the declaration of water emergencies once certain conditions exist. Our rivers, the water levels are dwindling. So we advise the minister and he declared well we have to declare that emergency and encourage people one, not to see for example take water and use a hose to wash your car and to take water and re-git your lawns and so on. A number of important measures have to be put in place. One that may sound a little controversial, say for example the construction companies they advise not to use wasque water. You do need water of a certain quality for construction but you can obtain that from other sources. For example, higher up in the river or some special sources which we in conjunction with the Ministry of Communications and Work can indicate where you look you can abstract water from those sources to be your construction. And also there is the issue of issuing licenses for the abstraction of water. Now that is a new development because originally licenses were not being issued for people to abstract water. Right now if you have a source of water on your land or you're bonded to a source of water whether it's a river or a well or something it belongs to the state, it belongs to the crown. And your allowed private use and not private use includes substances like to irrigate your garden or to wash another domestic use but if you want to go into any commercial activity for example like construction and using it for an elaborate amount you will require to use or apply for license from our agency. The drought has uncovered a lot of things and speaking to a friend of mine recently he has his home with a system and collects rainwater during the rainy season and that water is used to flush toilets and to irrigate now that's an extremely good idea so those of us who are in the process of constructing houses should seriously consider that and we can use rainwater for lots of things rather than use potable water and it's a very good idea going forward. It is within our societies, within our nature to rivers when no water is around. The onus is on us as individuals when we go to the rivers to practice healthy practices do not defecate, do not dispose of garbage which at the end could lead to disease transmission to us. So the public health point of view we are concerned about the implications of the quality of water which people are going to consume the practices which are going to affect the health status of these individuals. What do you find happen within these drought situations are people normally resort to unsafe sources of water they normally resort to covered storage, drums, tanks or even the use of rivers and then going back to these unsafe sources which may be an example, may be a river you have the implications or you have the possibility of disease resubmitting, you understand for example schistosomiasis or the bilazia resubmitting because these sources of water could be contaminated and hence would serve as an agent of transmission to the general public. We as the agency has to make a firm commitment to really manage that resource which is precious so that our generation can use it and our future generations could also benefit from it because in the absence of water I'm telling you a lot would be destroyed there would be great destruction, plants, animals and humanity, right? So I'm advising or I'm encouraging everybody let us put, take that resource, let us conserve it use it wisely for yourself and at the same time think of the future. Every family should actually be attempting to use less water going about their daily lives and make use of what they have and try to make it last as long as possible. Things like washing cars are really not necessary at this time and these things should be cut out completely wetting lawns and wetting plants at this time some of you can do it out or use reusable recycled water to do that. A few steps which could be taken in terms of disinfecting water that you would have, portable water is that you could treat it with a gallon of water it drops of liquid bleach also we could boil that water for bringing up to boiling point and let it stand and after we could consume this these are the two household ways which we could implement to get safe water. There are a few other water conservation tips which we could pass on and that is take shorter showers, don't let the water run while you're brushing your teeth or you're rinsing your dishes also there's a very effective method which you could conserve water which most people don't know about and that is placing a one litre bottle filled with water in your toilet tanks this would enable less water for flushing and thereby conserving water water which is used for washing or even rinsing of dishes could be used to water your flowers so these are conservation tips which could be used and could engage in and help sort of alleviate what we're going through right now. This has been On The Swat a production of the Government Information Service and the National Television Network NTN on Primus Hutchinson. In the end of our program we highlighted the present drought situation and we're hoping that all will heed the warnings of the officials as we continue to hope for an improvement in the supply of water from intakes island wide. Well that's where we come to the end of our program we thank you for viewing and we invite you to join us again when we go On The Swat.