This dry season will be two or three months longer than usual, posing a high risk of drought where irrigation systems are lacking, according to the Royal Irrigation Department.

Fifteen provinces are now in the initial stages of drought, director-general Samart Chokekhana-phithak said recently, citing RID statistics, although the Interior Ministry has found that 21 per cent of villages located in 40 of the country's 76 provinces are facing the problem.

He said the delay of rain during the last wet season had been caused by the El Nino phenomenon and the unseasonable downpours earlier in January had stopped. The rainy season normally runs from July to October, peaking in August.

Dams and reservoirs are now 81 per cent full, but Interior Ministry figures show that 21 per cent of villages in 40 provinces, totalling 15,698 villages, are suffering from drought.

The figure in 2004, which saw the most severe drought in decades, hit 58 per cent, or 43,623 villages.

The RID has designated only 8.6 million rai of farmland, out of the total of 27 million under its responsibility, for off-season farming.

Samart said he could not give assurances that water would be sufficient for off-season farming outside that 8.6 million rai.

All 367 RID-operated dams and some hydropower dams operated by the Electricity General Authority of Thailand could trap 7.6 billion cubic metres of water, or 7-8 per cent of the volume needed for agricultural use without rainwater.

More dams are urgently needed, but the public tends to object to any being built, Samart said.

Thus it is important to increase the capacity of existing dams to enable them to hold more water, he said, citing two dam projects as an example of successful expansion, the Yang Chum Reservoir in Prachuap Khiri Khan and the Lam Pao Reservoir in Kalasin.

The RID is developing a master plan to lay the groundwork for new irrigation systems and develop existing ones in 25 river basins across the country. The plan includes a large-scale project known as Chao Phya II, in which a new river and a network of tributaries could be dug to distribute water more efficiently in the Central region.

Students in Tak province are feeling the pinch from the drought.

An 11th grader said he had to take water in a bottle to school every day and needed to hide it carefully as the bottles kept going missing because the other students were as thirsty as he was.

The administrators of Ban Klong Sak School in Muang district have to rely on only one water truck a day to supply more than 500 students and teachers in three schools and people living in 10 villages.

Monks at Pho Chai Temple in Nakhon Phanom's Tha Uthen district and nearby residents are forced to use dirty groundwater for cooking and other household uses because they have no mains.

Some of them can afford to buy water at Bt200 a small tank, but most have to collect muddy water from rice fields and purify it with alum.

Pramote Prasongwatthana, head of the provincial civil-defence office, said more than 57,000 households in almost all districts were at the mercy of the drought and that distribution of water could only help them. No water for farming is available, and crops on more than 1,000 rai are wasting away.

Severe drought has ruined 67,290 rai of farmland and affected nearly 500,000 residents in the four lower northern provinces, said Wittaya Wachira-angkun, director of the Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Office's Region 5.

The damage in Nakhon Ratchasima, Chaiyaphum, Buri Ram and Si Sa Ket has been estimated at Bt16.6 million and it is predicted that the drought will destroy 78,703 rai of farmland, causing about Bt27 million in damage.

Anan Paengnoy

The Nation