Govt to amend Meteo Act to give room for revenue generation

Currently, Act 682 does not empower GMet to demand revenue from its service users, although some of those organisations use information from GMet to make money.

Although the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) and the Ghana Airports Company Limited use meteorological information on aircraft for money, only the GCAA has been paying something meagre to the service.

Dr Edward Omane-Boamah, the Minister of Communications, who made this known at the celebration of this year’s World Meteorological Day in Accra Monday, urged the management of GMet to provide the ministry with information on both the technical and personal needs of the service.

He explained that the government was ready and willing to resource the service to any internal competitive standard to provide its service, adding that when the act was amended, the service would be able to pay for its investments in time.

Presently, because GMet has no legal muscle to retrieve money owed it, the Ghana Airports Company has failed to settle its indebtedness of over $2 million to the service.

Even after the law has been amended, farmers and fishermen and selected organisations will continue to use information provided by GMet free of charge.

The GMet keeps meteorological watch over the flight information region for the GCAA, provides information and warnings on approaching weather on a 24-hour basis and provides weather report for the Air Traffic Control (ATC) of the Kotoka International Airport on a half-hour basis.

It also provides 24-hour aerodrome forecast, terminal aerodrome forecast (TAF) on a six-hour basis and aerial weather summary for rescue and search operations.

Explaining further, Dr Omane-Boamah said the devastating rate at which the environment was being destroyed required concerted efforts from all, especially all agencies and organisations whose activities had an impact on the environment.

He called for positive efforts from all, including the use of positive attitudes towards the environment, and suggested increased planting and nurturing of trees to build the earth’s capacity to deal with increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

He said apart from the warming of the environment, the negative effects of global warming could also affect the rainfall pattern, which would impact negatively on the nation’s rain-fed agriculture.

Story by Donald Ato Dapatem