Vietnam's South Central Coast and Central Highland regions are facing severe drought conditions with local authorities unsure how they will cope.

South Central Coast's Centre for Hydro‑Meteorological Forecasting announced that the central region would likely be worst affected due to low rainfall in 2014 and early this year.
Total rainfall in the region was 1,828mm, down 60 percent on average. Rainfall in the first months of 2015 was 50 prcent below average. Water levels in rivers and streams are falling and reservoirs at hydropower plants are low -- reservoirs in Khanh Hoa and Ninh Thuan provinces are at 13 percent and 32 percent respectively.

Since late 2014, thousands of people in four communes of Kien Hai District have had to buy drinking water from other provinces after wells went dry.

The Department of Cultivation, under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, said lack of water had already shrunk the spring-winter harvest.

Nguyen Van Tinh, deputy head of the Directorate of Water Resource, said people should use less water, which prompted one farmer in Phu Yen Province to say it was hard to use less when there was no water to start with.

Local authorities have proposed farmers sow drought-resistant plants in paddy fields, but Trinh Thi Thuy Linh, head of Khanh Hoa Province Department of Plant Protection, said this method was difficult to realise.

"When there's a drought, these fields can't grow rice or other plants due to lack of water. They mostly become wasteland," she said.

The Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Le Quoc Doanh, has asked the Directorate of Water Resource to work closely with Vietnam Electricity on how to discharge water from reservoirs to ensure water for farmers.

Dtinews