When conducting an oral presentation to Parliament on the new Weather Bill last month, one of the things I mentioned was the fact that the South African Weather Service is now charging for critical and desperately needed information.

 Is this unconstitutional? Since when must one pay for weather information when we are already being taxed to support the existence of such a service?
 
The body I run is a volunteer emergency communication service with no financial support, yet we desperately need information from the Irene radar site and other radar sites around our country for good accurate weather information  for the benefit of the community!
 
Recently all the exceptionally valuable information previously available to us has simply disappeared but is now available from them at R40 to R180 a month!
 
If the Weather Service gets an allocation from the government to run its service and it finds itself short of money, then it is up to the service  to motivate government for more money and not to pass the cost of running the service to those who desperately need information but cannot afford it!