Abstract:
We undertook a study that evaluated the public weather services used by people working in the formal services sector of the Ghana based in Accra, the capital city of Ghana. The study employed randomly-sampling survey technique to request information from 102 respondents on their use of services and information produced by the Ghana Meteorological Agency (GMet), the country’s official producer and archival of meteorological data, information, products and services. The results of the analysis of survey data indicated that virtually all the respondents used public weather services produced by GMet. The users generally considered the quality of the public weather services to be of moderate quality. Using the contingent valuation method to ascertain the economic value of public weather services, 87.7% of the respondents were prepared to pay for the public weather services rather than be without them. The average WTP per person per month was 16.67 Ghana cedis per month or 200.04 Ghana cedis per year or 51.96 United States dollars per year. The aggregate economic value, based on only the users of public weather services in the formal services sector of Accra, who constitute just about 2.1% of the total work force of Ghana, is over four times the value of the annual budget provided by the Government of Ghana to GMet in 2016. Users in the formal services sector wanted GMet to produce more locality-specific weather forecasts and services with advance warning times. Further the information from the Agency needs to be distributed and publicised by the mass media through radio and television including the emerging and fast growing local language-based mass media on hourly basis rather than the current system where they are supplied to the general public once a day via the evening television news through the English-language radio and TV channels.
