ID :
375977
Sat, 08/01/2015 - 15:47
Auther :

Minister warns of devastating impact of El Nino in Indonesia

Jakarta, Aug 1(Antara) - Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs Indroyono Soesilo has warned against the devastating impact of the weather phenomenon El Nino with long drought, crop failure and forest fires in wide areas in the country this year. "The Agriculture Minister reported that if El Nino is strong, it would damage crop in around 220,000 hectares of 8.1 million hectares of rice fields in the country,"Indroyono said at a news conference after a meeting on impact of El Nino and forest fires at the presidential office on Friday. According to the US Atmosphere and Oceanography Agency, Australia Meteorology and Indonesian meteorology office said , strong El Nino would hit between August and November this year. "The impact of El Nino, therefore, is long drought , harvest failure , forest and bush fires and water shortage, but in some areas fish production would increase," Indroyono said. Indroyono also quoted Agriculture Minister Amran Sulaiman as saying that so far , five of 16 major dams in the country already have deficit in water. However, report by Public Works and Housing Minister Basuki Hadimuljono said that there was no problem in water supply from big dams. Indroyono said the agriculture ministry has coordinated with regional administrations to cope with the problem feared to be caused by El Nino. "The ministry has asked governors, regents , city majors to use fund for special allocation of Rp2 trillion from the state budget to build water reservoirs and 20 million water pumps have been made available," he said. He said the state owned Board of Logistic is studying steps to be taken to cope with harvest failure by providing 2.5 million tons of rice stock especially in October. Harvest failures were already reported in a number of area such as Lebak, Banten, and forest and bush fires have hit in Sumatra and Kalimantan.

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