Britain gives archiving boxes to Met Dept

The British government on Tuesday donated 400 archiving boxes to the Department of Climate Change and Meteorological Services in Malawi to assist in storage of historical climate records.

Speaking when he officially received the archiving boxes at the department’s headquarters in Blantyre, Minister of Natural Resources, Energy and Mining Atupele Muluzi expressed gratitude to the British government for the continued assistance it has been rendering to the department.

Muluzi said the archiving boxes will improve the safe keeping of the historical climate data manuscripts of the Malawi nation “to be used by the current and future generations for the socio-economic development of this country”.

“The boxes donated today are durable and waterproof, easily transferable and capable of storing large volumes of manuscripts of data. They also offer tidiness and easy packaging of manuscripts, thereby saving us from losing the valuable historical climate records,” said Muluzi.

In his remarks, deputy British High Commissioner Martin Scales pledged his government’s continued assistance to the department, saying climate change remains the greatest challenge to most African countries.

Scales said the archiving boxes have been donated by the United Kingdom Meteorological Office as part of voluntary contributions under the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) Voluntary Cooperation Programme.

Director of the Department of Climate Change and Meteorological Services, Jolamu Nkhokwe, said the boxes will enable the department to “realise its mission of providing reliable, responsive and high quality weather, climate and climate change services to the nation.”