With the dry season beginning to affect many parts of the country, efforts are being made to ensure that effective and efficient measures are instituted to avoid severe and drastic drought effects through the implementation of a National Water Policy and National Drought Management Plan.
“The Water Policy, hopefully, when implemented would bring people’s perception to reality that we all would be thinking of water as important and as a scarce resource and so that the policy is ready to ensure that the present and future generations have access to sufficient and safe water”, he said.
It is said that sometimes we don’t adhere to regulations but if we want to manage this thing in terms of our future development, regulations will be important.
We want to ensure that we use water efficiently…”, he added.
Dr. Peters pointed out that the National Drought Management is intended to ensure that during the dry season “we want to ensure the greatest public benefit for domestic water”.
So while irrigation is important during a drought, the most important thing is for people to have water to drink.
So, when they are going to be restrictions, the first priority NAWASA has is to make sure is that people has water, sufficient water and safe water to drink”, he said.. Minister of Agriculture, Yolande Bain-Horsford disclosed that the ministry’s contribution towards the drought situation will be the implementation of a monitoring system to record the impacts on water supplies, soil degradation and agricultural production.
When we speak of valve regulation, it means that there are limited hours within which all of those consumers would be receiving a supply.
Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, Elvis Morain called for a more holistic approach to be taken to minimise the effects of the impending drought.
Deeper meaning, we have to begin to look at alternatives in terms of food.