Accra-Ghana, March 01, GNA – The Ghana Meteorological Agency (GMet) today launched its awareness creation month to highlight the role meteorology in the economy, disaster management and early preparedness.
The initiative, under the theme, “The future of weather, climate and water across generations” is seeking to inform the public of the climate services of the agency and the need to keep themselves updated.
Speaking at the maiden launch in Accra, Madam Ama Pomaah Boateng, Deputy Minister of Communications, said the public needed to be abreast with the regular weather updates and make decisions based on it.
She urged the Agency to disseminate the weather information to local communities, especially farmers through the community radio stations, assembly and unit committee members.
“The current approach where update is shared on televisions, radio, and social media is great, but there are people in areas where they are cut off by virtue of their location. The use assembly men and information centers can help,” she said.
She gave the assurance that the government was ready to support the Agency with technical and logistics to enhance their work.
Mr George Amoo, Board Chairman of GMet said many people were unaware of the importance of meteorology to national development, hence, their resolve to undertake an awareness campaign on the relevance of weather and climate.
“We have no choice than to make full use of meteorological information, to minimize the adverse effect of weather and climate and to make use of the information as a resource for planning well into the future to protect the property and livelihoods, ” he noted.
The Board Chairman urged other stakeholders to support GMet to discharge its mandate.
Mr Eric Asuman, Acting Director General of GMet also said the initiative was a mandate by the World Meteorological Agency (WMO) to get people prepared to take necessary actions when extreme weather events occur.
“In Ghana, the awareness is very low when it comes to climate services, so, we are taking advantage of it, instead of doing a day celebration to create awareness on the services we provide to them, we want to extend it so that they will improve on whatever activity that they engage in to protect life and property, he said.”
He appealed to the government and other stakeholders to come to the aid of the agency to provide the needed equipment, which would help them in their operations.
The National Meteorological awareness month would end on March 31,2023, with a Staff Honours to appreciate the efforts of some workers who had contributed immensely to the development of the agency in previous years.
The Ghana Meteorological Agency exists to provide efficient and reliable meteorological information by collecting, processing, archiving, analysing and dissemination of findings and meteorological information to end users.
