The Western Cape government is implementing a US $22.7 million emergency programme to get through the drought disaster and avoid ''Day Zero'', Premier Helen Zille said on Thursday.
“This drought is one of biggest disasters that has hit the province for a very long time and, despite predictions to the contrary, it has been a very low rainfall year,” Premier Helen Zille told reporters in Cape Town.
Between 2014 and the present, the province's dams have gone from overflowing to about 32% capacity. With spring heralding the end of the winter rainfall period, residents' long baths and watering of gardens are not the only things at stake.
The $27 million will allow the provincial government to take extraordinary measures to get through province through summer into the winter of 2018. Normal rainfall might resume then.
Work has already started on equipping and commissioning five boreholes, to connect them to the reclamation plant to supply Beaufort West with water.
According to economic development MEC Alan Winde, the worst-case scenario could be a total ban on irrigation during summer, raising job losses to 20 000.
