South African weather forecasters who get it wrong face imprisonment

South African weather forecasters who predict severe storms or gales without permission from the authorities could be punished by up to ten years imprisonment or a hefty fine under new legislation. The bill, officials say, is aimed at "protecting the general public against the distribution of inaccurate or hoax warnings or weather predictions that could cause public panic and lead to evacuations and/or the unwarranted waste of resources – money, people and technology". It would mean that independent forecasters wanting to issue a severe weather warning would first need to get written permission from the state-run South African Weather Service.

Members of the public who ring in to radio stations or newspapers to warn of an impending storm without asking SAWS first could also find themselves criminalised under the bill. First-time offenders face a penalty of up to five years imprisonment or a fine of five million rand (£400,000), while repeat offenders could be jailed for up to ten years or be made to pay a ten million rand (£800,000) fine. The bill also includes a limitation of liability clause for SAWS, ensuring that it cannot be held responsible for any damage, loss or injury caused by its predictions. Environmental groups and opposition politicians say that public information is a vital addition to forecasting services in stormy South Africa, where droughts, floods, gale-force winds and bushfires are common.



Gareth Morgan, the shadow minister of environmental affairs with the Democratic Alliance opposition party, said the "draconian" law was an attempt to "establish and protect an unfair monopoly on services offered by the Weather Service, some of which are commercial". Professor Hannes Van Der Merwe, head of Stellenbosch University's Geography Department, said most independent weather services provided farmers with detailed predictions so they could plan when to plant and spray crops. "I am not aware of any bogus warnings that have caused disruption," he said. "It sounds to me like this is part of what has become a trend within government to centralise control."

Isham Abader, deputy director general of the department of environmental affairs insisted there was "nothing untoward" about the bill's intentions. "It merely seeks to prevent the transmission of unreliable information. Incorrect weather warnings could lead to the evacuation of an entire town at great expense to the tax payer," he said. A spokesman for the department later admitted this had never happened, adding: "we need to pre-empt such incidents."