HYDERABAD: The Hyderabad Meteorological Centre has recently segregated its operations to cater to the two separated states but there is a question mark over establishment of a separate centre for Andhra Pradesh due to the staff crunch. Nearly a year after the bifurcation of erstwhile Andhra Pradesh, there has been no word of communication on it from the Indian Meteorological Department which functions under the Union ministry of earth sciences.
As per norms, every state should have a meteorological centre and, except the north-eastern states, every state has one. While some officials favour establishment of a new centre in Andhra Pradesh for the sheer reason of avoiding additional work, some believe division of the existing staff would hamper operations in both states.
At present, senior staff at the Hyderabad office have to attend the meetings held by both the state governments and prepare reports. An official said on the condition of anonymity, “It gets very tiring at times to report to two governments. We are anyway generating weather information separately for the two states with our limited staff. Many times, a single person has to perform several functions.”
When contacted, in-charge director K Sitaram said no proposal for establishment of a separate centre had been sent to the Centre. However, it is learnt that such a proposal has been in preparation for several months now.
Another official put it more succintly: “Hyderabad will be the capital for both the states for 10 years. A met centre is established in the state capital. As no clarity exists on the capital of Andhra Pradesh, it is too early to talk about it.”
He further pointed out that splitting the existing Begumpet campus and establishing a new centre for AP would not be wise and it was not even under consideration. He said that a cyclone warning centre for the coastal regions of Andhra Pradesh was already functioning from Visakhapatnam. Currently, the climatology section of the Hyderabad Met Centre collects data from 17 departmental observatories and 12 non-departmental observatories in both states, scrutinises the data and supplies to various users, including the aviation sector, as per their demand.