EDITORIAL - Who would steal meteorological equipment?

First it was reported that the Pagasa lost some weather forecasting equipment. Days later, it was learned that even landslide predicting equipment in Southern Leyte was also stolen. What is going on here?

The stolen pieces of equipment could not be used by other people because there is no business to be made out of operating them. Forecasting is a function that is of the government alone.

If the intention is to sell the equipment as they are, it would be extremely difficult to imagine any country or foreign meteorological agency to ever want to purchase second-hand weather equipment from the Philippines, in particular the Pagasa.

So either the theft was a simple act meant to derive loose change from the sale of broken scraps of metal, glass or wire in much the same way petty thieves would take down telephone lines for their copper wire, or it could be part of something far more darkly sinister.

Remember that the Philippines possesses one of the most outdated and obsolete pieces of meteorological equipment, making the Pagasa in dire need of upgrading. The need to upgrade is made even more urgent given weather such as what we are now having.

But to upgrade requires a tremendous amount of capital outlay. Meteorological equipment are not something to be acquired with a sneeze. Technologies have become so advanced that even relatively dated five-year-old equipment can bring the country to a coughing fit.

In other words, it is not easy to purchase modern meteorological equipment. But if the country does decide to go ahead and make the purchase, it will have to allocate a temptingly large amount of money.

The country needed to upgrade long ago. The recent series of thefts involving doubtlessly vital pieces of meteorological equipment only rendered the need more acute and imperative, making the buy more urgent. The thefts served to speed up the money.