So far, there has yet to be any updates on whether the oper­a­tion has led to any rain­fall.

Sabah has been exper­i­en­cing a dry spell for over a month, with many rivers and water catch­ments dry­ing up.

The state gov­ern­ment has begun send­ing water to 355 vil­lages in 12 dis­tricts statewide.

On Wed­nes­day, Hajiji said he had dir­ec­ted water to be sent to some 50,800 affected house­holds in vil­lages in Ton­god, Tuaran, Papar, Ken­ingau, Sem­porna, Kota Belud, Tenom, Pitas, Kota Kin­abalu, Penam­pang, Kudat and Tawau.

A Rm7.5mil alloc­a­tion has been set aside for this pur­pose in col­lab­or­a­tion with Nadma, he said.

He said the Sabah Water Depart­ment and dis­aster oper­a­tions com­mand centres in the affected dis­tricts had also begun dis­trib­ut­ing water to the people.

The drought has also brought about fires, res­ult­ing in haze in parts of the state, includ­ing an Air Pol­lut­ant Index (API) read­ing of 154 in Kimanis and 73 at Poly­tech­nic Kota Kin­abalu as at noon yes­ter­day.

API read­ings of between 0 and 50 are cat­egor­ised as good, 51 to 100 (mod­er­ate), 101 to 200 (unhealthy), 201 to 300 (very unhealthy), while 300 and above are haz­ard­ous.

So far, the state Health Depart­ment has not recor­ded any death or heat­stroke cases due to the dry spell.