Jean-Marc Ram­per­sad

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

jean-marc.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

Nu­mer­ous is­sues plagu­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS), in­clud­ing a staff short­age at the in­sti­tu­tion, have re­sult­ed in a back-and-forth ‘blame game’ be­tween the cur­rent and for­mer pub­lic util­i­ties min­is­ters.

Af­ter a ser­vice dis­rup­tion on Oc­to­ber 1, which af­fect­ed the de­liv­ery of rou­tine fore­cast prod­ucts and ser­vices at the Syn­op­tic (Fore­cast­ing) Branch, for­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les is­sued a me­dia re­lease blam­ing the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion and urg­ing them to solve the is­sues quick­ly.

Gon­za­les stat­ed, “The cur­rent lack or dis­rup­tion of es­sen­tial weath­er ser­vices sig­nif­i­cant­ly en­dan­gers the lives and safe­ty of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the en­tire east­ern Caribbean that de­pend on time­ly weath­er and flight ad­vi­sories em­a­nat­ing from the TTMS at Pi­ar­co.”

The me­dia re­lease al­so of­fered some ad­vice to the cur­rent gov­ern­ment, in­clud­ing al­lo­cat­ing nec­es­sary re­sources for staffing, com­mit­ting to trans­par­ent up­dates dur­ing re­duced ser­vice, and de­vel­op­ing a long-term re­silience strat­e­gy for the TTMS.

Gon­za­les al­so high­light­ed in­vest­ments in the TTMS made dur­ing his tenure, such as the restora­tion of the Doppler radar fa­cil­i­ties, the in­stal­la­tion of a GOES-16 satel­lite sys­tem, and the ap­proval of a new staff struc­ture, which was ap­proved by the pre­vi­ous cab­i­net.

In an of­fi­cial re­sponse yes­ter­day, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath blamed mis­man­age­ment by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion for the is­sues.

He said, “In­her­it­ing the Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vices af­ter nine and a half years of ne­glect is like in­her­it­ing a car that has been sit­ting aban­doned in the garage for years.”

The min­is­ter said that he had re­ceived re­ports on staff short­ages, out­dat­ed equip­ment, and a lack of fo­cus on crit­i­cal main­te­nance.

In re­sponse to the in­vest­ments made by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion, Min­is­ter Padarath lament­ed that they were “mere band-aids ap­plied to deep­er sys­temic fail­ings that they chose to ig­nore.”

The re­lease al­so stat­ed that the Min­istry’s Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary con­firmed that there were no dis­rup­tions in the es­sen­tial ser­vices pro­vid­ed by the TTMS, de­spite an email to the me­dia from their Syn­op­tic (Fore­cast) Of­fice in­di­cat­ing a ser­vice dis­rup­tion, which in­clud­ed all pub­lic weath­er fore­casts. Guardian Me­dia ver­i­fied that there were no pub­lic weath­er fore­cast up­dates be­tween the rou­tine 6 am fore­casts on Oc­to­ber 1 and Oc­to­ber 2—a 24-hour pe­ri­od.

Aris­ing out of the pre­vi­ous dis­rup­tion in Ju­ly, the min­istry es­tab­lished a team led by Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary Shiv­an­na Sam to tack­le these is­sues. Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Min­is­ter Padarath said that he in­tend­ed to meet with the Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary and the team to dis­cuss the mat­ter.