MANILA, Philippines?While rainmakers are having trouble finding clouds to induce rain over northern Luzon, cash and food-for-work programs are being readied to help 1.3 million poor families cope with the dry spell, according to the National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC).

Social Welfare Secretary Celia Yangco Monday said the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) was just awaiting Malacañang?s go-signal to implement livelihood programs to help the poorest families as the El Niño phenomenon continued to dry up farmlands and dams across the country.

?We will implement a social integration program for over one million families identified as the poorest of the poor to help them get by until the drought is over,? Yangco said at the meeting of the Regional Consultative Committee on Disaster Management in Pasig City Monday.

The DSWD is among the agencies that make up the NDCC, host of the three-day assembly of Asian countries, together with the Bangkok-based Asian Disaster Preparedness Center, a nongovernment organization.

The disaster management meeting was aimed at discussing the priorities of each participating country and the implementation of community-based disaster risk reduction in vulnerable communities in the face of climate change.

The Philippines said it would share its expertise in disaster response and learn from its counterparts some measures on how to cope with climate change, particularly the prolonged dry spell, during the meeting.

Back-to-back storms

Food-for-work and cash-for-work programs will be implemented to benefit families who have been greatly affected by the back-to-back storms that battered the country late last year, Yangco told reporters.

In an interview later with the Philippine Daily Inquirer, she said the 1.3 million families targeted for the livelihood programs were those already being subsidized by the conditional cash transfer program that was rolled out by the DSWD two years ago.

These families come from the 40 poorest provinces in the country.

Cash, food program

The cash-for-work program will provide P150 a day to each poor household for two weeks, while the food-for-work program will give one cavan of rice to each family for the entire month, according to Yangco.

Jobs will include cleaning parched farmlands to prepare them for the next planting season and desiltation of canals, she said.

The Department of Agriculture has pegged the budget for the livelihood programs at about P1.5 billion.

?We will implement this program once President Macapagal-Arroyo gives us the go-signal to do so. We will talk about this at our Cabinet meeting [today],? Yangco said.

Looking for clouds

For his part, the NDCC chair, Defense Secretary Norberto Gonzales, said rainmakers were ready to seed clouds to help out farmers because ?we?re having problems finding clouds.?

?So there is not much we can do but to repair water pipe leaks,? Gonzales said at the press conference of the consultative meeting.

He said the NDCC had authorized the repairs of old water pipes across Metro Manila in coordination with local government units and barangay (village) officials.

Leaking pipes

In Manila alone, some 40 percent of water supply is wasted due to leaking old pipes. ?We are making sure that repairs of water pipes are being done 24/7,? Gonzales said.

He placed the damage of El Niño to rice, corn and other crops at P3 billion.

NDCC Executive Director Glenn Rabonza said the government had reactivated the El Niño Task Force, which was created by Malacañang in 2001. The task force is headed by the Department of Agriculture.

?Various measures are being taken up by the task force to reduce the impact of drought,? Rabonza said.

Shallow tube wells

Aside from cloud-seeding, the use of shallow tube wells is being implemented ?to save farms that are worth saving.?

Rainmakers started cloud-seeding operations in January in Isabela province and the southern part of Tuguegarao, among the areas worst-hit by the dry spell, said Lt. Col. Gerardo Zamudio, spokesperson of the Philippine Air Force.

He said Air Force pilots were ?cloud chasers? because they fly once they detect the appropriate clouds to seed.

On Friday, pilots were able to seed clouds that triggered about 20 minutes of rain in Burgos town, Isabela, Zamudio told the Inquirer over the phone Monday.

On Sunday, rainmakers were able to induce a 10-minute rain in another part of the province, he said.