Budget and personnel cuts, lack of basic equipment prevent RP’s weather agency from doing its mission satisfactorily
BY BLESILDA I. CORRE RESEARCHER

AFTER attending the “15th DOST-PAGASA Media Seminar Workshop” last weekend in San Manuel, Pangasinan, I became quite sure—and perhaps most of the other media people in attendance also—that the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) is one of the government’s unfairly underestimated and maligned agencies.

It is in fact one of the agencies whose people are doing their work well, and often, heroically, despite its being one of the most neglected and funding-deprived.

Pagasa has a difficult mission and mandate.

By law, its mission is:

“To provide weather, flood, climate and astronomical products and services to promote the people’s safety and well-being, and contribute to national development.”

Its mandate is:

“To provide protection against natural calamities and utilize scientific knowledge as an effective instrument to insure the safety, well-being and economic security of all the people, and for the promotion of national progress.” The sentence unfortunately limps after the last comma. Perhaps a “to” between “and” and “for” will improve the sense. Notwithstanding, it is a powerful mandate statement—proper for a country’s weather, geophysical and astronomic bureau.

Pagasa, as early as five years ago, begged the government and the Congress for funds to acquire much needed equipment. Had the funds been given, early warnings from Pagasa could have prevented or greatly reduced the property damage and deaths that tropical storm Ondoy caused in Metro Manila and environs.

And not only Ondoy’s devastation. There were some 54 typhoons, some of which caused heavy devastation. Pagasa could have predicted much of the power of the winds and the density of the rains in these typhoons if had been granted the funds to acquire the Doppler radars and other instruments it begged for five years ago.

Bills in both houses of Congress seeking to modernize Pagasa and upgrade its resources have not been passed these past 11 years since the first bill was filed in 1998.

Yet, Pagasa has managed to add more and more pieces of necessary equipment—and repair its old instruments—thanks to contributions from the Department of Science and Technology (DOST, its mother agency) and releases from Mala-cañang’s Budget office.

Foreign donors have also been kind: Japan, Korea and Australia are the past two years’ most impressive givers of aid to Pagasa.

I interviewed Pagasa’s Administrator Dr. Prisco Nilo.

What is the status of Pagasa today? What’s needed to be done?

Dr. Nilo: We have accomplished much, and in a scale of 1 to 10, we are at 6, or 60 percent of being in full-service with 2013 as our target year to be 100 percent in full service. We have accomplished 60 percent of what we want to be in 2013.

What compromises the rest of the 40 percent is more on the need for more equipment and training of new personnel.

What is greatly needed is the upgrade of our telecommunications system. So for us to really have access in real time to all data in the field, we need to upgrade the telecommunications system.

This is on top of the other things that need to be accomplished like the additional of Doppler radars and new satellites. Telecommunications upgrade is on top of the radars and satellites we also need urgently and vitally because it is most important for us to be able to upgrade the communication system into 7.5GHz to avoid interference that leads to erroneous data. The interferences are the various signals that are there in the air.

The other great need is the technical training of our personnel. Our manpower is around 1,000 plus. We send them abroad as part of their training. But we have new recruits and we are losing people to agencies abroad.

Of course, we need to procure a lot of other pieces of equipment like more Doppler radars and new satellites.

We already have started negotiations for foreign funding of the telecommunication system. Then we also upgraded the system in Pampanga, which will extend to Tarlac. So more or less we’re done in Cagayan Valley. Now, Northern and Central Luzon will follow. And the rest of Southern Luzon, then Visayas and Mindanao, which are all of a still of bigger scale.

How much funding is needed to accomplish the remaining 40 percent?

Dr. Nilo: We still need P3 billion to be of full-service till 2013. And that is on top of the other funds that we still need to acquire to improve on some of our existing equipment. So there is still a long process till 2013.

The allotted budget of Pagasa this year is around P767 million. But for next year, the proposed budget is being reduced to around P614 million—almost P100 million less—because of the global recession. However, it can still be increased if the Congress and the Department of Budget and Management use their influence.
(To be continued)