Drought leaves elderly farmer fearing for future

The prolonged dry spell has left 68-year-old Satya Wati watching her crops die and her only source of income disappear.

The future is uncertain for Ms Wati, who lives alone at Nawaicoba Settlement in Nadi and has spent her life farming sugarcane and vegetables on her 20-acre land to support herself and raise her four children.

Now the land that sustained her has become dry and unproductive. Her sugarcane is drying out, her vegetables have withered and the soil is too hard to cultivate.

“Because of this dry weather, everything has dried up and died. The sugarcane plants are drying out, and their leaves are now turning brown. I grow a variety of vegetables, but everything has withered and completely dried up,” Ms Wati said.

“With no water, the soil is hard, nothing grows on it, and the plants which I had planted are completely dry. Only the dried stems are standing.”

After depending on farming throughout her life, Ms Wati said she had reached a difficult point.

“I have come to a really difficult stage now. What can I do now?” she said.

Her 80-year-old cousin, Prem Chand, regularly visits from Votualevu and helps her on the farm following his retirement.

Mr Chand said he had seen how difficult the situation had become for Ms Wati, who lives alone and has no alternative source of income.

“We are pleading with the government to assist us with something, at least a tank or something, because she (Ms Wati) lives on her own and tries to farm, which is her main source of income, but now nothing is left,” he said.

For Ms Wati, the immediate concern is how she will survive without the water needed to sustain her livelihood.