Hundreds of experts and scientists at the US National Meteorological Agency received a dismissal notice for unknown reasons.
“Hundreds of employees of the National Ocean and Oceanic Agency (NOAA), including the forecast specialist at the National Weather Agency, received a notice of termination of the contract without plausible reasons. This is unacceptable,” American MP Grace Meng said on February 27, emphasizing this move will make “American life in danger”.
Senator Jared Huffman confirmed that “hundreds of experts and scientists in NOAA have been fired”.
Craig McLean, a former scientific leader in NOAA, said the move to cut personnel seemed to be divided into two phases, the first batch of 500 people and the next batch had 800 people. This figure corresponds to 10% of the total manpower in NOAA.
Monitoring station of the US National Weather Agency in Texas in 2014. Photo: AP
Those who are fired in the first batch are probationary staff. There are currently about 375 probationary staff at the US National Weather Agency (NWS), which is the place to perform daily weather forecasts and dangerous warnings.
Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California in Los Angeles, criticized the move to cut a series of personnel as “extremely short -sighted, will cause great harm to the safety of Americans and the recovery of the economy against weather disasters”.
NOAA has not announced the reason for dismissing the series of employees.
The move takes place while the US Government Performance Committee (DOGE) is promoting the reduction of public spending and streamlining the federal civil servant force. Thousands of probation officers at many US government agencies have been fired in recent years.
When attending the first Cabinet meeting of the new government on February 26, billionaire Elon Musk warned that the US would be bankrupt if Doge did not act to streamline the government.
This effort is causing a lot of controversy in the US, including the Republican Party. Many Republicans were criticized from voters for the drastic measures that Doge was deploying, affecting millions of civil servants and families.