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anipah cuddles her 2-year-old son while preparing buckets to collect water from the Cipamingkis River a kilometer away from her house, which is located near a dried out rice field in Sinarjati village, Cibarusah district in Bekasi, West Java.

The river, the level of which was dropping, Hanipah said, was the only natural source of water for the villagers during the dry season when they also depended on free clean water from the Regional Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD) and the administration.

'€œWe choose not to cultivate the rice field. During the dry season, my husband usually goes to the city to seek work as a temporary construction worker,'€ the 32-year-old mother of two told The Jakarta Post recently.

Hanipah and her family are among over a thousand families in Sinarjati village suffering a water shortage during this year'€™s dry season.

Besides Cibarusah district, four other out of the total of 23 districts in Bekasi regency are suffering from the prolonged drought this year. They are Central Cikarang, East Cikarang, Babelan and North Tambun.

Cibarusah district head Iman Santoso said his district was experiencing the worst drought among the five districts.

He said the annual drought had affected 2,774 families in Sinarjati, Ridomanah and Ridogalih villages during the past three weeks, with 50 families at Cibarusah Kota village feeling the pinch of a water shortage for the first time.

'€œSo far, we'€™ve obtained only temporary help from the regency administration and volunteers from outside the regency. We are yet to get a long-term solution,'€ Iman told the Post at the Cibarusah district office.

Bekasi regency BPBD head Sahat MBJ Nahor said that clean water distribution had become an annual regency program with Cibarusah district obtaining the largest volume of water.

The BPBD, he said, also planned to provide some disaster posts at the district this week to better reach out to residents. '€œWe'€™ve made such a plan as this year'€™s dry season is expected to last longer than usual,'€ Sahat said, adding that the regency administration would establish a water treatment plant in Cibarusah district in 2016.

The prolonged dry season has affected water supplies in 20 out of 29 districts in Tangerang regency. Bogor regency has also experienced the worst dry season since 1997, which has threatened the harvest of 3,000 hectares of rice fields.

The Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) has warned that the intensity of the El Niño weather phenomenon could strengthen in the next four months and is likely to give rise to a prolonged dry season.

The agency has predicted that the rainy season will start in November instead of October.

Amid the prolonged dry season forecast, residents in a number of areas in the Greater Jakarta area enjoyed rain of varying intensity over the weekend.

According to the BMKG, rain fell in South Tangerang, South Jakarta, Central Jakarta, West Jakarta, North Jakarta and Bogor in West Java.

Bogor resident Irman Syahriadi, 30, said that a blackout even hit the western part of the city during heavy rain on Friday evening.

'€œIt was the first rain in two months. I'€™m happy because I can start planning to ride my offroad motorbike again after being idle for two months because of the dry season,'€ he said on Sunday.

The BMKG predicted that most areas of Greater Jakarta would enjoy a cloudy day on Monday, except for Bogor, which may see light rain in the evening. (foy)