Cebu City now in state of preparedness

CEBU, Philippines — The City Council has placed Cebu City under a state of preparedness as an effort to mitigate the impact of the weak El Niño being experienced by the country.

The council made the move initiated by Councilor Margarita Osmeña following recommendation from the Cebu City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council.

“There is a need to declare a state of preparedness to comprehensively address and mitigate the ill-effects of the El Niño phenomenon,” reads portion of the CCDRRMC resolution.

CCDRRMC presiding officer Veronica Morelos, also assistant city administrator for administration, forwarded the resolution to the Council.

Last March 11, the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration declared that a weak El Niño would likely to continue until June this year.

The City Council also asked the Association of Barangay Councils and the 80 barangays to gather data and submit a report on the impact of El Niño in their respective areas relative to water supply, farm production, and livestock, among others.

The Council also asked the ABC and the barangay officials to identify the needs of the affected sectors like the farmers.

Initial assessment of the City Agriculture Department revealed several sitios in 28 barangays in the city suffering from shortage of water supply because of the weak El Niño.

“El Niño is defined as an irregularly occurring and complex series of climatic changes affecting the equatorial Pacific region and beyond every few years, characterized by unusual warm ocean surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific,” reads the resolution.

According to CCDRRMC, several farmers are now using water pumps to tap underground water sources for their production while some farmers are reducing the volume of crops planted proportionate to the available water supply.

To address the water shortage problem in the mountain barangays, the city’s agriculture department has distributed 430 drums to farmers in the upland areas.

This is on top of the P10 million to P12 million assistance for the farmers under this year’s budget of CAD, which can purchase 1,200 drums, 500 hoses, and 150 power sprayers to farmer beneficiaries by end of April.

The Metropolitan Cebu Water District itself is experiencing dwindling water supply that affected over 9,000 water connections in elevated areas in the city like Banawa, Sambag 1, and uptown areas.

As of Monday, MCWD recorded at least 15,000 cubic meters deficit in daily production per day.

MCWD spokesperson Charmaine Rodriguez-Kara said MCWD has an average daily production of 238, 000 cubic meter per day, adding, that it is now down to 230,000 cubic meter per day at the onset of the dry spell.

She said the deficit is now about 15,000 cubic meter per day due to the lowering of the water levels of Jaclupan Facility and Buhisan Dam.  JMO (FREEMAN)