Brain drain to Canada blamed for ferry disaster

While investigators sift through the wreckage of last month’s Philippine ferry disaster which killed over 800 people, local authorities are blaming the national tragedy on 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, wrote independent consultant Joel D. Adriano in Asia Times.

Other specialized science-and technology-oriented agencies in The Philippines, 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.

A recently-released report by the World Bank identified Filipinos as among the top 10 foreigners in 16 countries in Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America.

According to The Philippines-run Commission on Filipinos Overseas, there are now an estimated 789,943 Filipinos in Canada alone, making Filipinos the seventh-biggest foreigner group in the country.

And according to The Philippines new labour attache for Western Canada, Consular Officer Bernardino Julve, 8,500 official Canadian work visas have been issued for Filipinos in the first half of this year, with thousands more Filipinos reportedly working in the underground economy.

And it is no longer just Filipino labourers who are heading overseas for better job prospects than the Philippine economy can provide. In recent years, doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers and pilots have all left in their professional droves for overseas opportunities.

Canada is one of the planet’s top people poacher.

The health care sector in Canada is a place where this reality has become alarming.

The Philippines, one of the major source countries for Canada, is running out of doctors and nurses as we actively recruit in the impoverished Southeast Asian nation.

In 2006, more than 6,000 nurses working in Canada graduated in The Philippines.

It is estimated that about 6,000 doctors in The Philippines are studying to become nurses so they can find higher-paying jobs abroad.

The country is facing a health care crisis as doctors working in a government hospital in The Philippines earning only about C$500 a month are lured by Canada to earn ten times the amount while working as nurses.

At the same time over 40,000 nurses take the National Licensure exam yearly in The Philippines. About 15,000 of them leave each year to seek jobs overseas.

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 Canada 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."

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 per cent 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.

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.

Western Canada Labour Attache Bernardino Julve says many Filipinos return to their homeland in their twilight years "in the spirit of patriotism," often investing in property or small businesses. He says The Philippines must now attempt to offset its brain drain by encouraging earlier returns by overseas Filipinos.

"We need to entice them to come back mid-career stream and invest in their home country and generate more jobs," he told The Asian Pacific Post.

But without financial incentives to lure scientists home, the Balik 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.