R

esidents in a number of villages in East and Central Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara (NTB) have been facing a clean water shortage in the past two weeks due to drought.

Dara Kunci, Labu Pandan, Madain and Padak Guar are four villages in Sambelia district suffering water scarcity.

Head of Disaster Mitigation at the NTB Social and Civil Registration Agency, Chandra Aprinova, said the water crisis was an annual problem for many villages during dry season.

Chandra said his officers had distributed clean water since early Ramadhan to a number of villages in East Lombok, including the worst-hit area Seriwe village in Jerowaru district.

'€œEvery year, Lombok always faces water scarcity, starting in July. The peak of this crisis would be between September and October,'€ said Chandra.

'€œThe problem is we have very limited water tanks and sometimes the villages are hard to reach,'€ he added.

Chandra said that the Social Agency had five water tanks with a capacity equal to 5,000 liters each. The tanks, he went on, are considered enough to tackle the current problem, but the agency needs more if the condition worsens.

'€œIdeally, we should have had 10 tanks,'€ he said.

'€œIn some locations, we see that it is possible to build drilled wells, but the residents cannot afford to build them. We hope that NTB administration through its public works agency could assist villagers on this issue [building drilled wells],'€ Chandra said.