The Ghana Meteorological Agency (GMet) is set to deploy 250 new recruits across the country. 120 of the new recruits according to GMet, are trainees from the Nation Builders Corp, who have been retrained and employed as permanent staff of the agency.

This was disclosed at the closing ceremony of the Meteorological Awareness Month and Deployment of Recruits, at the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission in Accra.

In his address, the Acting Director General of Ghana, Eric Essuman said “after the three years training period, the GMet made a special appeal to the Communications Minister to grant us a special dispensation and get us financial clearance from the Ministry of Finance to maintain the NABCO personnel.

"The Minister responded positively as we secured clearance for all 120 NABCO personnel, and an additional 130 more complimentary staff as permanent employees of the Meteo Agency.”

All 250 new recruits will be assigned to all regional and district offices of the agency nationwide.

Speaking to JoyNews on the sideline of the event, the Head of Central Analysis and Forecast of the Ghana Meteorological Agency, Felicity Ahianyo explains that “some of these persons will be in charge of administration procedures, daily and hourly observations.

"We are grooming some to become Assistant Meteos who will be sent to the regional offices to assist in analysing the information collated from across the regions. All of these will be forward to our headquarters for forecasting.”

She said the deployment will help improve the accuracy of predictions, and the agency’s current validation rate of 89%.

Improving funding and equipment

Delivering the keynote address, the Minister for Communication and Digitization, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, promised more government funding for the agency.

“The Ministry of Communication and Digitization also facilitated payment for operation vehicles, calibration equipment, and the message switching system procured by the agency. Several other automatic weather stations have also been installed with funds from the government’s E-Transform project, to expand your network of stations across the country, since 2018,” she said.

The Minister added that, “GMet is also a beneficiary institution to receive support under the World Bank funded Ghana Digital Acceleration Project which is currently awaiting approval from parliament.”

She has therefore appealed to all new recruits to accept posting to any part of the country and work diligently to improve the output of the revamp of the Meteorological Agency.