We need help – Ghana Meteorological Agency

The Ghana Meteorological Agency has competent personnel to carry out its duties but lacks the resources to effectively discharge its mandate, Felicity Ahafianyo, a meteorologist, has said.

Her comment follows Tuesday night’s heavy rainstorm that blew away the roof of Ghana’s legislature with portions of the floor being soaked in rain.

The leakages disrupted parliamentary business and forced the house to defer sitting. The rains soaked the carpet in the chamber and also messed up seats in the house.

Speaking in an interview with host Chief Jerry Forson on Ghana Yensom on Accra100.5FM on Wednesday February 1, Ms Ahafianyo said: “I have been working there for almost 20 years and I will tell you that we are up and doing, but we need the working tools to work with. As we speak our amendment bill is even with parliament but up to now we have not heard anything about it.

“Some departments, companies, and institutions [who] are major end users of our forecasts are also supposed to pay us, but they are refusing to pay GMet and so you ask yourself, where do we get the money from for normal stationery, for normal things that we can work with?

“And parliament too we are not hearing anything from them and so we are hoping that the new government that has come now will help GMet so that we will be up and doing like UKMet, Japan Metrological Agency, like America’s. We have good hands at GMet but we will only need one or two things to get these things across to the public.

“This forecast was prepared as far as 3pm yesterday but ask me how any people have heard it because most of the media houses that we sent the report to them did not even telecast it.”