(This is my article for "People's Brigada News" weekend tabloid, http://peoplesbrigadanews.com/wpress/index.php)
The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) is the monopoly weather forecasting body in this country. Among its catastrophic forecasts were those of super-typhoons “Ondoy” (international name “Ketsana”) and “Pepeng” (“Parma”) last year, and typhoon “Basyang” (“Conson”) middle of this month.In other cases though, PAGASA would exaggerate its forecast, forcing the public and the local governments to make over-cautious preparations, like suspending inter-island shipping and plane flights, only to see mild rains and wind.
When I got married several years ago in Iloilo, my siblings and cousins from Negros Occidental were not able to attend. The Coast Guard did not allow inter-island travel between Bacolod and Iloilo (just one hour by boat) because PAGASA said storm signal no. 2 was up in that region, even when it was sunny and the wind has pacified.
Weather forecasting need not be an exclusive function of the government. The scientific and technical know-how to gather data and interpret them can be done by private enterprises. Private corporations now have capacities to send their own satellites into space to provide telecommunications and other services to the public.
Government weather forecasting bodies like PAGASA do not get penalized for their catastrophic failures in doing their job. No one was fired in PAGASA, its budget was never cut, and each failure in weather forecasting is even used as additional excuse to demand more tax money to further “improve” the agency.
Private weather forecasting enterprises though, will get heavy penalty if they make bad forecasts consistently. There is no tax money to put them up, no tax money to bail them out if they are constantly inefficient. They are under pressure to provide the most accurate, the most updated, hour by hour monitoring, of severe weather disturbances, for their clients.
Weather forecasting in the country should be deregulated and private companies should be allowed and encouraged to enter the market. PAGASA can either be privatized, or be subjected to certain penalties like firing its key officials and shrinking its budget the next year, if it remains a lousy agency. Persistent lousiness and persistent reduction of its budget should ultimately result in its abolition or privatization.
A friend wrote a good post in his blog, “Privatize PAGASA or open weather forecasting to competition”, http://prudentinvestornewsletters.blogspot.com/2010/07/privatize-pag-asa-or-open-weather.html
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