Mozambique: Government plans to build 54 weather stations by 2024

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Mozambique: Government plans to build 54 weather stations by 2024

2:48 CAT | 16 May 2022

Photo: Janfar Abdulai on Facebook

The government is set to build 54 new weather stations by 2024 as part of the “One District, One Weather Station ” program, the Minister of Transport and Communications said on Friday.

“We plan to cover around 54 districts [with weather stations] by 2024, and then add another 54,” with a total of 108 weather stations expected to be installed under the program, Minister Janfar Abdulai.

Minister Abdulai was speaking this Friday on the sidelines of a meeting to assess the impacts of the 2021-2022 rainy season, held by the National Institute for Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (INDG).

The “One District, One Weather Station” program was created to address the natural calamities affecting the national territory, considered one of the country’s most severely affected by climate change in the world, facing cyclical floods and tropical cyclones.

At least 142 people were killed, 368 were injured, and more than a million were affected by natural disasters during the latest rainy season, which ran from October to April.

“Unfortunately, the biggest cause of deaths this season was walls collapsing, especially in Nampula and Zambezia provinces,” said the director of Mozambique’s National Emergency Operating Centre (CENOE), Ana Cristina Manuel,

According to the CENOE director, houses are mostly built with precarious material, which leads to “walls not resisting” the rain.

The rainy season in Mozambique also caused “major impacts” in the energy, education, roads and fishing sectors, Manuel said, without advancing any figures.

In Mozambique, the 2018-2019 rainy season was one of the most severe in living memory. Seven-hundred-and-fourteen died, including 648 as victims of two of the largest cyclones (Idai and Kenneth) ever to hit the country.

Source: Lusa