Vice Premier Hui Liangyu said the top priority of the current fight against the lingering drought should be maintaining drinking water safety.

The vice premier, also head of Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters (SFDH), on Saturday urged more efforts to prepare for the prolonged drought which was expected to last until next spring.

The SFDH has issued an urgent circular to concerned departments, requiring them to intensify water conservancy development, take measures to ensure drinking water safety and maintain agricultural water supply for the winter and coming spring.

It has sent four groups of experts to supervise drought-fighting work in provincial regions including Jiangxi, Hunan, Hubei, Guangdong, Guangxi and Guizhou.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Finance, along with the SFDH, would allocate "a huge amount of funds" to finance efforts to combat the drought.

In a view to protecting water security in the Pearl River Delta, the SFDH also required local headquarters along the Pearl River to collect data on real-time stream flow in the river and keep a close watch on salt tides starting from December.

Since October, scant rainfall and warm weather have caused severe droughts in China's southern regions, affecting more than 1 million hectares of farmland and resulting in a shortage of water supply in some areas.

From October to November, the Pearl River saw the minimum rainfall in five decades.

Governments of drought-hit regions have taken diversified measures to maintain water supply.

(Xinhua News Agency December 10, 2007)