Acting Director of Forecasting and Synoptic Meteorology, Joseph Tetteh Portuphy, has highlighted some implications of the Ghana Meteorological Agency (GMet) staff strike.
Speaking in an interview on JoyNews’ The Pulse on Friday, he said that airlines cannot fly into the country due to the strike.
He noted that “the airlines currently flying into the country are doing so at their own risk” since he does not know where they are getting their weather updates from.
This, he said was because the staff expected to forecast the weather are not providing that particular service.
The staff of the Agency embarked on an indefinite nationwide strike on Friday.
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According to the staff, the sit-down action is due to government’s failure to respond to their resolution presented to the Communication and Digitalisation Ministry on January 5 which enumerated their poor conditions of service.
Mr Portuphy explained that the Meteorological Agency is part of the United Nations World Metrological Agency and that the Agency is mandated to observe the weather and report on a three-hour basis thereby making their services essential.
“So every three hourly, there is what we call synoptic data that we observe, record and push into the global system and if they are not working we will lose data for that and then the whole world will also suffer. It is very dire,” he said.
In response to the strike, he stated that if the clients for whom they provide services are able to pay for their services, they will not continue the strike.
“If those that we render service to are able to do their bit of the bargain, we will not reach where we are now because there are a lot of people and clients that we provide services for and they need to pay for it unfortunately most of them are not paying for it,” he stated.
He said the Ghana Meteorological Agency is owed an amount of ¢80 million by government agencies.