WC govt not concerned about drought after drier-than-normal season prediction

CAPE TOWN - The Western Cape government says it is not concerned about a drought following predictions of a drier-than-normal winter season.
 
The Western Cape Disaster Risk Management Centre briefed the media on plans put in place to deal with weather-related incidents this coming winter.

The South African Weather Service has predicted below-normal rainfall for parts of the province. 
 
Provincial Disaster Management Centre head, Colin Deiner, said they're not too worried about a drought, as the province experienced good rainfall for the past two winter seasons. 
 
"The reason that we've said we are doing a watch is we don't want to get to next season and realise that we've lost a year of monitoring. So, we don't have any immediate concerns at the moment around a drought later on, but we are putting very early measures in place like we did at the end of 2015, which enabled us to prepare for what started happening in 2017."

He added that R21 million had been set aside for the next three years to respond to emergencies.

“We are working on a process of making it a permanent thing, but it is just so that if we need money immediately to respond, maybe you have to take generators somewhere, you have to activate helicopters, you have to do those kinds of things, that they can be done immediately.”