The five staff of the PCCW Limited working in the Meteorological Telecommunication Centre (MTC) of the Observatory left on 1 October. To thank them for their contributions in meteorological telecommunications services, a farewell ceremony was held in the Observatory on 28 September.

During the ceremony, Mr. C Y Lam, Director of the Hong Kong Observatory, recalled that the gathering of meteorological observational data from the mainland relied upon the reception of short wave radio broadcast by MTC colleagues. The Morse code broadcasts were skillfully decoded into textual messages, and which were kept in good conditions. Such historical information was very valuable and supplemented the record of mainland's observations in the 1970's, in which the original copy of some of the reports had already been lost.

The five MTC staff had worked in the Observatory for many years. One of them had even been with the Observatory for more than 3 decades. Many colleagues of the Observatory came to the farewell ceremony to give souvenirs and take photos with them for commemoration.

Mr. C Y Lam (fourth right), Director of the Hong Kong Observatory, colleagues of the Meteorological Telecommunication Centre and
representative from PCCW, Ltd. took part in the farewell ceremony