Chinese Vice-Premier, Hui Liangyu, has called on governments of drought-hit areas in south China to ensure the supply of water for drinking and irrigation.
  
Hui made this remark during a five-day inspection tour from March 23 to 27 throughout southern Hainan and Guangdong provinces, both suffering serious droughts. 
  
The dry spells in the island province Hainan has lasted since the beginning of this year. More than 45 percent of the region's cropland and 64 of its middle and small rivers dried up by the endof February.
  
Meanwhile, nearly 26,700 people living in villages along the province's main river, the Wanquan River, had difficulty in obtaining drinking water and about 1,770 hectares of farmland lacked water resources.
  
Guangdong is also facing grave dry spells; the rainfall in mid-March was 20 percent less than average. The water reserve in its 30 major reservoirs has decreased by 203 million cubic meters to 3.44 billion cubic meters and other 1,000-plus small reservoirs have dried up.
  
Vice-Premier Hui called on local governments to further increase their input in the anti-drought fight. The provincial government of Hainan has allocated 8 million yuan (US$967,400 million) to its drought-hit areas earlier in February.
  
Moreover, Hui urged local governments to strengthen scientific and uniform management of water resources and promote water-saving technologies and regulations. 
  
He also ordered local officials and agricultural experts to help farmers fight the drought, protect seedlings and learn re-seeding technologies to replace withering crops that died from shortage of water.

(Xinhua News Agency March 28, 2005)