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A SENIOR weather forecaster said Tuesday he hoped
more typhoons would lash the Philippines this year to ease a
lengthening dry spell that has caused power outages and threatens
agriculture.
But President Arroyo also on
Tuesday was reported by ABS-CBN to have allotted P664 million to
mitigate the effects of the abnormally long dry spell in the
country.
Budget Secretary Rolando Andaya
Jr. said the fund will be given to the Department of Agriculture,
which the President tasks to prepare for the country’s farms for
the drought.
Typhoons and storms kill hundreds
in the country every year, but Nathaniel Cruz, the government’s
chief weather forecaster, said rain induced by the strong winds
could ease the “drier than usual” conditions on the main island
of Luzon.
Scant rain has pushed water
levels at Luzon dams below normal, affecting power generation and
causing three-hour power outages last week.
“We need tropical cyclones,”
Cruz said on ABS-CBN television.
The weather bureau expects
between two and three to hit the country in August and “let’s
hope that these winds will [bring rain],” he said. “We need the
rainfall.”
The bureau said that June and
July rainfall patterns in much of Luzon, including Manila were
“below normal” and “this has led to dry spell conditions.”
It said this has been “felt in
the various sectors, such as agriculture, water resources, health
and energy.”
If these conditions persist in
the coming months it “may develop into drought conditions.”
President Arroyo had asked the
public to save water and ordered all agencies to prepare for a
drought if rains do not come by August.
On Tuesday the Office of the
Civil Defense (OCD) said it would intensify its cloud-seeding
operation in Northern and Central Luzon.
OCD Administrator Glen Rabonza
said the agency would commission five more aircraft for twice-a-day
cloud seeding in affected areas.
“We need to produce more
rains… especially in agricultural and watershed areas. The
instruction from President Arroyo is to mitigate the effects of the
dry spell,” Rabonza said.
He said that with five more
aircraft, there would now be eight planes for the cloud-seeding
operations.
Six of the eight aircraft used in
cloud-seeding operations were leased from a private firm at P1. 7
million each a month. The two other aircraft are from the Air Force,
according to Rabonza.
--AFP and ABS-CBN
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