PNG to attend 4th meteorological meet

The National Weather Service will represent the country at the 4th Pacific Meteorological Council (PMC4) meeting in Honiara, Solomon Islands, from August 14-18.

Also coinciding with the meet will be the 2nd Pacific Meteorological Ministers Meeting (PMM2) for ministers and senior officers responsible for meteorological agencies from around the region on August 18.

The PNG National Weather Service director Samuel Maiha confirmed the country’s attendance and explained the major aims of the meet and its importance.

“We have what we call meteorological services. In PNG, we call it the national weather services.

“Regionally, we call them meteorological services, and so we have a council called the Pacific Meteorological Council (PMC),” Mr Maiha said.

“This meeting will be the fourth PMC4 meeting. The meeting is held every two years. During the last one we also had the Pacific Meteorological Ministers meeting number one.”

Mr Maiha said PNG will not be represented by a government minister. However, the Department of Transport, responsible for the weather office, will send its deputy secretary, Kevin Luana, to attend the ministerial meet.

He said discussion will center around the weather, issues faced by the fraternity, emerging initiatives and linkage between the weather and climate to the economy.

He said the meet will also see reports by various members of the PMC against the outcomes set in the last meet at Tonga, in 2015.

“Out of it will be some recommendation and agreements. Basically, it will be in regards to climate change. Weather services will become very important with climate change coming up and also connected to sustainable development.”

“If we can have some very good focus, we can probably manage resilience issues to do with transport infrastructure, agriculture and food security.

“There is going to be a statement, there will be two statements, out of the Pacific Meteorological Council meetings. There will be recommendations on how best to manage weather services within the region.”

The outcomes of the meet will also see a new set of recommendations developed for the respective ministers and senior officials of territory states to take onboard to achieve.

“From the first meeting we will be reporting on what we have achieved over the last two years against a strategic plan, regional strategy.

“That strategy is from 2012 to 2021, and what we do there are in 14 priority areas.”

“Then we will identify gaps. Those gaps will be recommendations to the respective governments and also to the aid donors,” he said.