Disasters and emergency response

Facing severe drought as it enters its hottest season, Thailand has launched groundwater extraction operations in its most arid regions to tap sources deep beneath the soil, as it looks at ways to harness future supplies. The groundwater department has sent geologists and more than 80 ...

The ambassadors of Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia have called for greater support from the U.S. and the ASEAN regional bloc to address urgent environmental threats to the Mekong River. They also emphasized the need for improved water data sharing by all countries on the river, ...

Laos has become the only country in ASEAN with zero deaths attributed to the Covid-19 coronavirus. Until last week, Cambodia and Laos had each recorded zero deaths from the Coronavirus, despite differing strategies for Covid prevention and control. Cambodia suffered its first death from Covid-19 last Thursday ...

Learning it the hard way from last year’s drought and salinity, Mekong Delta farmers have been preparing their crops for the worst. Early March, Huynh Huu Loc, 62, comes to check the water level in canals around his family’s durian farm, which stretches 1,000 hectares (2,470 ...

Laos has an estimated 63,000 unemployed, including those already in the country and migrant workers who have returned to Laos due to the Covid-19 pandemic. According to a report by the KPL, the unemployment rate in Laos is expected to increase by 20 percent. Head of the Employment Promotion ...

Nearly 1,800 health professionals working in six districts that have high risk of infection have been inoculated with the Covid-19 vaccine since March 1, the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) reported on Friday. The BMA has provided inoculation to 1,790 healthcare personnel through 13 private hospitals, three ...

Saltwater intrusion in the Mekong Delta will continue to increase in March and April, according to the National Centre for Hydro-Meteorology Forecasting. The peak of saltwater intrusion will occur during high tide on March 12 -16, March 27 – April 1, April 9 – 14 and April 24 ...

For Bernard Kervyn, the pandemic has made poverty alleviation an even more challenging task in countries along the Mekong River. Kervyn, regional director in Vietnam and Cambodia for the nonprofit organization Mekong Plus, said the outbreak has led to a 30 percent rise in the number ...

A popular sandy beach on an island in the Mekong River has been reopened to visitors, to the delight of local businesses, after being closed since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic last year. The reopening last week of Had Hae beach, in tambon Nam Kam, ...

Some 496 of 700 planned new homes have been completed for flood victims in southern Laos’ Attapeu province, and will be ready for residents in 2021. According to daily Vientiane Times, 496 new homes have now been built for victims of the flood caused by the ...