Science and Technology Undersecretary Graciano Yumul doused speculations Friday that he would be staying as chief of the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) for good, saying his stay in the agency would only last three months.

“I was assigned as Pagasa officer-in-charge (OIC) administrator for three months only so I would rather follow the orders of Science and Technology Secretary Mario G. Montejo and focus on the urgent tasks assigned to me,” he said.

Yumul said that he will look into the overall management side and not the technical side.

In taking charge of the management side, Yumul said he would go by the list of things to be done per order of Secretary Montejo. Foremost of these is the assessment of the programs and projects currently undertaken by Pagasa particularly on the installation of additional equipment which were sourced from Official Development Assistance (ODA) funds.

Since 2005, when Yumul was assigned as Supervising Undersecretary of Pagasa, he has been able to shepherd 11 out of the 13 ODA programs of PAGASA, which resulted in the acquisition of the much-needed Doppler radars and other forecasting equipment.

The equipment, including those for communications, is expected to give near real-time weather forecasts which will allow the concerned agencies and the public in general to appropriately prepare and respond to typhoons or other natural calamities.

Another urgent matter is the need to make weather forecast bulletins easily understood by the general public. Some activities are now directed towards this with the help of the media.

While the reassignment of former Pagasa chief, Dr. Prisco Nilo, under the DoST Special Projects has drawn criticisms in the past days, Montejo explained that before Nilo got his new assignment, all efforts were made and dialogues were conducted with him on how to ease up their fundamental differences in handling matters.

“It was not an overnight decision, a whim or a decision based on hearsay or the urging of some people. It was a well-thought of decision that I reached — to reassign Dr. Nilo to DoST Special Project and to designate Dr. Yumul as Pagasa OIC for three months. This I believe is for the good of the agency