Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh urged relevant ministries, agencies and localities to take measures to cope with the risks of drought, water shortage, and saltwater intrusion.
Recently, the situation that farmers raise white-leg shrimp in freshwater areas, specializing in wet rice cultivation in the districts in the Plain of Reeds in Long An Province tends to increase.
Aquaculture is more and more developing and plays an important role in the world. The global aquaculture production is currently above 82 million tons. Of which, Vietnam has more than 4.2 million tons, standing in fourth place in the world, and the Mekong Delta accounts for about 70 percent of the total farming area and production of the country.
The Directorate of Water Resources warned that with the forecasted level of saltwater intrusion in March and April this year, it is essential to prevent the possibility of water shortage of about 40,000 hectares of fruit trees in the Mekong Delta.
Prolonged hot temperatures have been causing difficulties to farmers in the Central provinces of Nghe An and Thanh Hoa. Thousands of hectares of rice were killed because of this record hot weather.
Saltwater intrusion and drought had damaged 16,500 hectares of winter rice crop grown on shrimp-farming land in Ca Mau Province last year; of which, 14,000 hectares of winter rice had been completely lost.
Although the Central region has not officially entered the dry season, drought has already occurred leaving many farming areas in severe shortage of water.
The National Hydrology Meteorology Forecast Center said that the Southern region and Ho Chi Minh City are expected to enter roasting season while the Central Highlands will maintain sunny with less rainfall on February 19-29.
Thailand’s Office of National Water Resources (ONWR) on October 22 urged people in some localities to brace up for water shortage that could last for eight months as the dry season is expected to begin on November 1.
According to a report from the National Hydrology Meteorology Forecast Center about this year’s dry season forecast, the Southern and Central Highlands regions will suffer drought and saltwater influx on the large scale in the forthcoming months after the recent record-breaking rainfalls.
The central city of Da Nang will speed up the construction of key water plants – the Cau Do, Hoa Trung and Hoa Lien – in order to supply 250,000 cubic metres of clean water each day by 2019-2020.