Drought leaves 4m thirsty in Sichuan
Nearly 4 million people are facing drinking water shortages amid the severe drought in Sichuan province despite scattered rainfall last month.
Sichuan Water Resources Department said 3.98 million people and 4.46 million head of livestock across the province were short of drinking water, while 116,000 people were living on supplies delivered by trucks, Xinhua reported.
The provincial meteorological bureau said the summer drought was very severe and 80 cities and counties had gone without rain for up to 39 days this year.
Sichuan's drought began in the spring and there was little relief last month because of 'prolonged high temperatures and limited, scattered rainfall', the bureau said.
The prolonged drought has made planting rice and sowing seeds impossible on large tracts of farmland. Half of the farmland is affected in some areas. 'The drought affects the growth of planted rice and corn. In some serious situations, the crops have dried up,' the report said.
In Suining's Guanyinxiang district, one of the worst-hit areas, people are living on trucked-in water after going without rain for a month.
An official with the city's Water Resources Department said the countryside was facing a much more serious drought problem and most of the department's staff had been sent to rural areas to manage the crisis.
Farmers were still waiting to seed 10,000 hectares of farmland and all the crops already planted in the worst-hit district, including corn, peanuts and cotton, had withered.
Xinhua reported last month that nearly 1 million people in neighbouring Gansu province were short of drinking water and nearly 200,000 hectares were lying fallow in the province's worst drought in 60 years.
The Ministry of Finance has earmarked 80 million yuan for relief supplies to Gansu, Qinghai and Ningxia .
