SA Weather Service tells Zille to stop blaming it for the water crisis
‘Blaming the weather‚ or climate and the weather service is a cop-out for policy inaction and ineptitude,’ says unimpressed weather service of Helen Zille
The South African Weather Service (SAWS) has issued a stinging rebuke to Western Cape Premier Helen Zille for suggesting the province faced a water crisis because their predictions were wrong. Zille told the current affairs show BBC Newsnight on Thursday that the weather service models no longer worked. "The drought could never have been foreseen. The South African Weather Services have said to me their models don’t work anymore‚ in an era of climate change‚" she said. The weather service reacted on Friday, saying: "The premier’s statement is disingenuous and extremely opportunistic coming as it does in the midst of a water crisis." The service said in a statement that it had noted reports attributed to Zille saying that the province "finds itself facing a crisis because SAWS got their predictions all wrong ... We view this in a very dim light as the premier only had one briefing from [the weather service] and already draws conclusions on our work. This is regrettable as SAWS would ...
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