Belize Needs More Met Officers  

The National Meteorological Service of Belize may soon be faced with a shortage of personnel. With senior employees retiring, filling their positions presents a challenge as it requires studying abroad to meet the qualifications in the field. Chief Meteorologist Ronald Gordon addressed the issue on Monday, emphasizing the urgent need for replacements for those who are retiring.

 

Ronald Gordon, Chief Meteorologist, National Meteorological Service

“To be honest we had one additional person coming on board and that was last year. So, in terms of our forecasting team it has not increased that much. We do hope people would become interested in this field. We are in a situation where several of our senior personnel have retired or are about to retire and we need to replacements. So it is something we do encourage. In terms of the gender balance, I would say it has flipped. First, we had more males in the field. But, certainly at this point in time, in terms of the technical persons, we have more females in this field. We encourage persons of all gender to join. We do outreach to different schools at different times to try to encourage students to become interested in the field of meteorology and we would hope it would be something that would take off. One of the difficulties we have is that this field is not offered in Belize or not taught here so persons needs to go abroad to qualify and that is one of the things that hinders us to recruit more personnel.”