An Giang (VNA) – The National Steering Committee on NaturalDisaster Prevention and Control held a meeting on November 15 in Chau Doc cityof An Giang province to evaluate its performance in response to floods in theMekong Delta region.

Nguyen Hiep, deputy head of the Department of Natural Disaster Responseand Mitigation under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development’sDirectorate for Natural Disaster and Control, said the peak of the flood season in the Mekong Delta this year reachedalert level two for the first time in many years.

Floods in September this year, with water levels up to 3.8m, mostly affectedDong Thap, An Giang, Kien Giang and Long An provinces, inundating 1,845hectares of rice, 5,480 houses, 2,375 hectares of fruit farms and 140.6hectares of vegetables, while destroying 334m of roads. No deaths werereported.

However, a report by the National Steering Committee on Natural DisasterPrevention and Control showed that as the region has seen no serious floods foryears, locals neglect preventive measures. Meanwhile, natural disasterforecasting is still inaccurate, rescue teams have yet to be equipped withadequate skills and there is a shortage of financial resources for evacuation missions.

Do Tien Lanh, Vice Director of the Vietnam Institute of IrrigationScience, in 2018, along with losses, floods benefited agriculture andaquaculture thanks to the alluvium it brought to fields.

However, the rapid withdrawal of flood waters at the end of the season maylead to early intrusion of saltwater, he said, advising localities to preparefor the dry season of 2019 when the Mekong River water level is forecast to be lowerthan the average level by 10-30 percent.

Flooding in the Mekong Delta region is predicted to be complicated nextyear.

However, Vice Director of the Directorate for Natural Disaster andControl Nguyen Truong Son stressed the need for better forecasts and alerts forthe community.

Localities should direct the cultivation and harvest of rice crops toavoid floods, he said, adding they should allocate funds and mobilise socialresources to reinforce dykes, while organising natural disaster prevention andcontrol forces and strengthening communications among the community onpreventive measures.

At the same time, regional localities should give proposals to PrimeMinister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on the allocation of resources to implement projectsof urgent prevention of erosion, construction of resilient residential areasfor 11,366 households in An Giang, Dong Thap and Long An, with total estimatedcost of more than 2.3 trillion VND.

Son also underscored the need to develop flood-based livelihoods andchoose plants and domestic animal resilient to natural disasters and climatechange.-VNA