Hydromet Office fully equipped, but understaffed – senior official

A senior official of the Hydrometeorological Office of Guyana has disclosed that although the entity is fully equipped with the necessary tools, it is understaffed.
According to the senior official, “We have enough of the instruments that we require to produce these forecasts, as we know the increase in climate variability and change we have to enhance your forecast, you have to enhance your model so at this particular time we are fine with what is happening because it doesn’t make sense that we have lots of models and we do not have the capacity to operate these models.”
The official noted that the entity is understaffed, adding that the lack of employees is a major concern. According to the official, climate science and meteorology is generally not a course that is fully offered in Guyana or around the Caribbean, thus making it difficult for persons to pursue or even be interested in the field.
“The particular area in climate science and meteorology is not a course that is fully offered in Guyana or around the Caribbean, so you find that it is a difficult career and you would find that people are less interested in that, so it’s not a career or a profession that you could pick somebody out of the street.
You really have to train this person, so training a person it involves over five years in this particular field,” he asserted.
It is because of this that the officer called for more training and sensitisation methods be introduced for the career.
“It’s an interesting career, it’s an interesting field of study and we know that we all talk about climate change and weather is everybody’s business so again we at this particular time we are much more better in weather and agriculture, but we would want to build more capacity in weather and tourism, climate and tourism, weather and infrastructure, weather and water, weather and energy we would like to do that,” he said.
In the past, the Hydrometeorological Office was accused of being unreliable as they failed to provide the warnings that were necessary. It is was also accused of providing inaccurate information as its forecasts varied from the actual weather or climate.