MANILA - While investigators sift through the wreckage of last month's
Philippine ferry disaster which killed over 800 people, one overlooked culprit
for the national tragedy is the mounting brain drain of the country's best
scientific minds.
The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services
Administration (PAGASA) failed to issue proper storm warnings before the Princess
of the Stars left port in Manila and into the path of an incoming
typhoon. The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) said it recently
invested US$40 million in new equipment at PAGASA, but that the agency lacked
the qualified meteorologists and climatologists to put the advanced technology
to proper use.
That's in part because PAGASA has seen at least five weather
forecasters, two weather observers and a hydrologist all leave the agency in
the past year to take higher-paying jobs abroad. When the ferry disaster hit,
all of their positions at PAGASA were still vacant.
Other specialized science- and technology-oriented agencies, including the
Mines and GeoSciences Bureau, are also fast losing science and technology
experts to overseas recruiters and failing to fill their vacated posts. The
Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and
Development has lost some 75 English-speaking staff over the past two years,
most of whom have migrated for higher-paying posts in Canada. Others from the
agency have headed to richer pastures in the United States, Australia, New
Zealand and Singapore.
The Philippines has the third-largest population of outward migrants in the
world, according to the United Nations. It is no longer just Filipino laborers
who are heading overseas for better job prospects than the Philippine economy
can provide. In recent years, doctors, nurses, teachers and pilots have all
left in their professional droves for overseas opportunities.
Now, a growing number of the country's best and brightest scientists are being
lured abroad by higher-paying salaries and better-funded research prospects,
taking with them hopes the country will ever make the jump from a slow growing
commodity-based to a fast growing knowledge-driven economy.
Many migrant Filipino scientists take higher-paying work with international aid
organizations or private firms involved in information technology, consulting
and biotechnology and pharmaceutical research, according to DOST under
secretary Graciano Yumul Jr. International assistance organizations, including
the World Bank, the United Nations and the United States Agency for
International Development, have been particularly aggressive in poaching
English-speaking Filipino scientists, one Philippine official notes.
The Philippine government already estimates it needs an additional 4,100
agriculture researchers, 2,000 fishery and marine science experts, 1,300
biotechnology staff and nearly 1,000 energy and environmental scientists just
to meet rising challenges from higher energy and food costs.
At the same time, the non-governmental Center for Migrants Advocacy expects
that more science and technology professionals will look to leave the
Philippines as the local economy slows, inflation rises and countries like the
US more aggressively bid to fill their severe shortage of science and
technology workers.
While Philippine universities and trade schools churn out close to 150,000
science and technology graduates every year, government statistics show most of
these are in medicine and nursing and that fewer than 2,000 receive degrees in
the so-called pure and natural sciences, such as chemistry and biology. Those
low graduation figures have stayed steady over the past 15 years, despite a
doubling of overall college enrollment figures over the same period.
Because the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration does not keep records
of outward migrants based on profession, precise statistics measuring the scale
of the scientific brain drain are not available. The United Nations-affiliated
International Labor Organization estimates conservatively that the number of
science-oriented professionals that have left the country has exceeded the net
addition in new graduates since the 1990s.
Local observers, however, are more alarmed about the gathering brain drain and
its long-term impact on the economy. "The impact in the long run is actually
happening now," said Patricio Faylon, executive director of the Philippine
Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and
Development.
"There is a shortage of manpower to do research and once we retire there will
be no people to manage our already few labs," said Faylon. "Now you have
non-technical people, mostly lawyers and uniformed men, working on
science-based planning for sectors such as agriculture and environment."
Regional laggard
The number of scientists and engineers currently engaged in research and
development (R&D)activities across the Philippines is about 8,800,
representing a 20% decline from the figure recorded in 1996, according to DOST.
That figure pales in regional comparison. Singapore, which has a population
less than half of Metro Manila, employs 19,377 scientists and engineers
involved in R&D activities, according to DOST's 2007 Compendium on Science
and Technology Statistics. Regional competitor Thailand boasts more than 30,900
R&D-related staff, while Indonesia has 92,800, and even Vietnam employs
41,100.
That has resulted in lower scientific output. The Philippines recently ranked
29th out of 30 countries surveyed for their respective science and technology
abilities, in a survey conducted by the Switzerland-based International
Institute of Management Development (IIMD). The IIMD survey of world
competitiveness from 2006, which compared various measures across 61 countries,
ranked the Philippines 58th in scientific infrastructure. Recent statistics
also show the Philippines badly lagging behind regional countries in the number
of patents applied for and received.
The main reason for the science and technology brain drain is better pay abroad
and lack of opportunity at home. A Filipino scientist working with a private
biotech firm can on average earn between three to 10 times more in developed
countries than locally, according to local industry sources. Over 70% of local
scientists are employed by the low-paying state because of scant employment
opportunities in the private sector.
Giovanni Tapang, chairman of Advocates of Science and Technology for the
People, laments that the Philippines lacks the domestic industries needed to
absorb the scientific scholars and engineers the university system produces
each year. He chalks up the deficit to a "market failure", driven in part by
the country's rocky politics, which have discouraged investors from making
long-term R&D-related commitments to the country.
"The industries present in the Philippines are only light-manufacturing,
construction, public utility and mining enterprises dependent on imported
equipment and raw materials," said Tapang. He noted that automotive
manufacturing in the Philippines focuses narrowly on assembly and testing,
while the few foreign semiconductor firms situated in-country work on older
technologies and provide little to no technology transfer for product
innovation.
The lack of a critical R&D capacity is discouraging new foreign investments
in manufacturing, including in the crucial electronics and computer sector,
some experts say. US semiconductor giant Intel, which has a manufacturing
presence in the Philippines, has developed a fabrication process based on
exotic materials such as Hafnium for its next generation of Pentium computer
chips. However, the US firm is said to be leaning towards establishing
production facilities for the new chips in lower-cost and more science and
technology-minded Vietnam rather than the Philippines, according to industry
sources.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization recommends
that developing countries allocate at least 1% of their gross domestic product
(GDP) towards science and technology to maintain competitiveness and sustain
economic growth. Philippine politicians have failed to make those budgetary
earmarks. Despite recent increases in funding for science-related activities,
including budgetary earmarks worth 3.7 billion pesos (US$81 million) in 2007,
the allocation is still lower than the 3.8 billion pesos made in 1998.
The current budget's allocation for science and technology related activities
comes to a paltry 0.14% of GDP, or half the amount of Thailand's 0.26% and
about a mere fifth of Malaysia's 0.69%. The figures are even more miserly when
measured in per capita terms, with the Philippines spending only $6.20 per
head, while Thailand commits $19.70 and Malaysia spends $61.90, according to
the World Economic Forum's most recent Global Competitiveness Report.
Apart from meager budgets, Filipino scientists and researchers complain that
there are no concrete policies to channel and facilitate research outputs into
marketable products or uses. Philippine research grants seldom if ever include
monetary provisions for spinning-off research results for commercial
applications, including the high costs of acquiring intellectual property
rights for new innovations.
Scientists also recommend that the government moves to establish science and
technology dedicated universities with better functioning and more modern
R&D labs. Instead, the government recently launched its new "Balik
Scientist" program, which aims to reverse the brain drain by encouraging
overseas Filipino scientists to return home and share their knowledge and
experiences with up and coming local scientists.
The government has provisionally targeted alternative energy, biotechnology,
pharmaceuticals and information and communication technology as areas of
priority for what it has referred to as a "brain gain" program. But without
financial incentives to lure scientists home, the program has over its first
five months received only five applications - considerably fewer than the
estimated number of scientists who have left the Philippines over the same
period.
Joel D Adriano is an independent consultant and award-winning freelance
journalist. He was a sub-editor for the business section of The Manila Times
and writes for Asean BizTimes, Entrepreneur Philippines, Masigasig and People's
Tonight.
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