Tonga Govt urges people to prepare for more severe drought

Transcript

The Tonga National Emergency Management Office is urging people to prepare for more severe drought, which it says could turn into a crisis in the next month.

Tonga has had extremely dry weather for nearly a year, and three months of low rainfall is expected as a severe El Nino strengthens its grip on the region.

The NEMO director, Leveni 'Aho told Mary Baines recent rainfall in Tonga'tapu and Ha'apai has meant the situation is not yet critical, but people must prepare for the worst.

LEVENI AHO: As far as Nuku'alofa and Ha'apai at this point in time there is enough sufficient water there, and also from the farmers point of view, it is still pretty green for us here. But you know, after, if it dries out for the next three to four weeks, then you can visually see the vegetation and grass will turn into a different colour. But so far at this point in time it is not yet in the critical situation.

MARY BAINES: So what does the weather forecast say? Is rain expected or will it be quite dry over the next four weeks?

LA: They are being careful that they are saying that there won't be any rain, but forecasting drier than normal. So there might be still some rain to come, but it will be less and I think that will impact us.

MB: So what preparations are being made for this?

LA: The main thing for this forecast is to alert, bring awareness, to the general public, that this is the trend that we will anticipate for the rest of the year. So it's for them to take precautions, be careful with rainwater, try to preserve as much, because we might go into a crisis the the next month or so. And hopefully if people are being careful about, the awareness is taken care of, the impact will be less. If they start precautions now, saving as much, fixing their gutters and getting whatever little rain that we've got, well they make sure that they have enough there to keep them going for the next few weeks.

MB: Is the government planning on shipping any water to affected areas at this stage?

LA: Not at this point in time, we will monitor that. But we are prepared, we are ready. That has been done last year. We mobilised distribution of water into the islands and now we have in place quite a few desalination plants. If extremes go that far, but desalination is quite expensive to run, but if ever we get to that stage we are prepared to do that. But hopefully people will go through water carefully and we don't have to distribute and use desalination at this point. But the thing with El Nino is not only the water shortage but it also normally comes with a very cold evening, and it might have some more cyclone activity on the coming season. So it's not looking very bright, the horizon at this point. But it's something that we keep monitoring and we keep alerting our people to.