adminElita Chikwati Agriculture Reporter
The Meteorological Services Department will distribute and install 1 580 early warning radios in eight provinces to assist people during extreme weather conditions and disasters. People in Harare and Bulawayo will not receive the gadgets as they can access weather information better than people in other provinces. Speaking at the Harare Agricultural Show, MSD director Dr Amos Makarau said the department was also working on supplying weather information including forecasts in 14 indigenous languages.
“The early warning gadgets will be distributed to communities, especially women and children, who are the major beneficiaries of weather information. People will be able to be alerted on disasters,” he said.
He said weather information is vital in planning different activities accordingly and discouraged the public from relying information from other sources, especially social media.
“As the national designated authority on meteorology (weather and climate) and seismology, we contribute to the protection of life and property and science-based informed socio-economic decision making by providing customer and stakeholder driven quality meteorological and seismological products and services.
“As such, we are the single authoritative voice in Zimbabwe on weather forecasts and warnings and climate,” he said. Dr Makarau said the El Nino weather effect had affected many farmers with some losing livestock.
He said remnants of the El Nino were still being felt and discouraged people from assuming that after every El Niño there would come a La Nina. La Nina is associated with high rainfall, although it is not always the case.
Meanwhile, climate experts have repeatedly called on meteorological departments to be capacitated. Early this year, climate experts raised concern over the lack of willingness by member states to take action based on the information provided by early warning systems last season.
They said expected actions from the warnings were not happening at the correct time and highlighted that information on El Nino was made available early but the region did not take much action to reduce the impact. The El Nino phenomena resulted in drought which affected agricultural production and saw the region facing food deficits.
The experts are concerned that the region lost thousands of livestock but de-stocking could have been done earlier with owners getting good returns. They suggested that governments start strengthening technical capacity so they are not always reactive but proactive.
Online Reporter