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(Third of
five parts)
Jenny
Balatbat left for the United States to teach kindergarten
pupils, leaving behind her job as a teacher at the San
Gabriel Elementary School in Bulacan.
She says
she used to mock her relatives who left the country as
unpatriotic and swore to remain in the country to serve
her fellow Filipinos. Now, she admits she swallowed her
“patriotism” so she could provide sufficient money for her
parents who are ill.
“I was
hesitant to go because of pride, but the offer of free
lodging and a salary four times more than what I was
earning was something I couldn’t afford to refuse,” she
says.
Balatbat
isn’t the only Filipino leaving for overseas employment.
And the continued departure of people like her is hurting
the public sector hard and deep.
Government
agencies are helpless to stop the bleeding of talents
leaving for local private-sector jobs or for overseas.
With limited funds coming from the government, and even
when fresh allocations do come, the money is always
insufficient to give government talents attractive pay.
The
military, for instance, has not been spared from this
phenomenon. Some soldiers of the Armed Forces of the
Philippines (AFP) are leaving to seek better opportunities
in the United States and Australia.
“The usual
motivations of those who joined other allied armed forces
are disparity in the pay and allowances and the risks
involved,” says an AFP official, who requests his identity
be withheld.
The US
government, for instance, offers citizenship to future
Filipino-soldier settlers. In Australia soldiers render
garrison duty from Monday to Friday only, with contracted
civilian guards guarding military bases on weekends.
Westerners
prefer to take with them Filipino soldiers because of
their compatibility with their military doctrines;
competency in communication; capability in different
occupational specialties in infantry, cavalry, armor,
signal and engineering; and experience and exposure in
asymmetrical warfare toward secessionist groups and other
insurgency threats to society, according to the source.
One
Philippine Military Academy graduate, for instance, has
joined the Australian Army and is now enjoying his rank as
a major, the source reveals, adding that Australia accepts
soldiers regardless of their previous ranks and
qualifications.
No more
nurses
WHAT is
happening to the military is, in a way, similar to the
problem already faced by the country’s medical sector with
nurses. Europe and the US had already anticipated problems
with their aging populations and began luring Filipino
nurses, doctors, medical technologists, pharmacists and
midwives to work abroad. The US even offers them ready
“green cards” for five years.
According
to the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA),
8,527 nurses were deployed in 2006, an increase of 10
percent from the year before. While this has benefited
many families, it is also hurting the country’s health
system.
“We are
going down with the health quality, not in the sense of
deterioration, but because we lack nurses,” Dr. Jaime
Galvez Tan, a professor at the University of the
Philippines College of Medicine, says.
As a
result of the continuing departure of nurses and other
health professionals, he says the country’s health system
has already “collapsed,” particularly in rural areas,
citing the “upsetting” situation in Western Samar where
there are no designated doctors in 14 municipalities. “Out
of sheer lack and out of no choices, health care is not
delivered the way it should be,” he says.
One pissed
doctor, Tan shares, once asked his head nurse why nurses
couldn’t follow instructions right. The nurse only
shrugged off her shoulders and said, “Dok, buti nga po
may nurse pa [It’s a good thing there are still
nurses],” Tan quotes the head nurse as saying.
Tan, a
former health secretary, claims that even in high-caliber
private hospitals, some nurses are unable to distinguish
urinals from spittoons. “If there are 12 nurses on duty,
only four can attend well to the patients’ need. I think
all of our skilled nurses have been poached outside the
country,” he says.
At
present, Saudi Arabia is in dire need of 5,000 nurses
while
New Zealand
and Australia continue to hunt for nurses and doctors who
are experts in giving health care in rural areas. Thus Tan
predicts a dramatic increase in the deployment of medical
professionals.
Weathermen
EVEN
weather forecasters, who are attracted by higher pay
abroad, are leaving. Weather forecasters here receive
about a measly P20,000 a month, forcing many of them to
augment their incomes by teaching science courses in local
schools. Those with masters’ degrees are opting to work in
Singapore and the Middle East, where they could easily
earn the equivalent of P150,000 a month.
Martin
Rellin Jr., acting director of the Philippine Atmospheric,
Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa),
certainly feels helpless. “I cannot raise their salary.
It’s only Congress or the government that can make salary
provisions,” he argues.
In the
last few years, 10 weather forecasters have left Pagasa—one
of them was even hired by the World Meteorological
Organization (WMO). While the number doesn’t sound
alarming, Rellin says that given the critical function
that Pagasa plays, one weather forecaster leaving in a
year could deeply hurt the agency.
President
Arroyo has already some support for the agency’s
human-resource development. That way Pagasa could still
maintain competitive weather forecasters through its
Science Education Institute program. “We’re now starting
with the Ateneo de Manila, UP and STI Colleges to actually
attract young people for possible hiring of forecasters,”
Rellin says.
Pagasa has
also been receiving financial support from the WMO,
Typhoon Community and countries like
Japan
and South Korea to run projects which cannot be solely
subsidized by the national government.
Less
scientists
SCIENTISTS
from the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) are
also going abroad in large numbers. Out of a total
population of around 88 million, the Philippines counts
only 2,977 scientists, according to the National Research
Council of the Philippines. And sadly, 440 of them have
already migrated to
New Zealand,
Australia, the US and other Asian countries. The United
Nations has recommended a ratio of 38 research and
development scientists per million for a developing
country.
A DOST
official says the skills and expertise of Filipino
scientists are valued around the world, adding that the
reasons for their departure are not necessarily financial.
The official says that scientists want to continue their
research where “advanced laboratory facilities, resources
and wide-consulting networks are available to create new
discoveries in which mankind may benefit in the future.”
The UP has
also lost almost 500 teachers, many of them in science and
technology, affecting the state university’s campuses in
Diliman, Manila and Los Baños, university president
Emerlinda Roman reports.
One way to
cope with the situation is through online courses. “With
modern technology, some of our courses are taught online.
So we’ve been able to do lectures that we [thought would
be impossible],” she explains.
According
to POEA statistics, almost 1,000 teachers left the country
in 2006, a 13-percent rise from 2005. The top three
destinations are the US, Saudi Arabia and China.
Staying
put
IN order
to boost the income of its professors, the university
allows them to accept either consultation jobs or to teach
outside UP as long as they comply with the necessary hours
they need to devote to the university.
Roman,
however, says that there are policies now in place that
will limit their consultation jobs. “There is a rule
implied, say, one cannot be promoted if he or she couldn’t
come up with a published research,” she says.
Those who
stay, she says, are faculty members who derive
satisfaction from discovering something or making
innovations. “We still have teachers who don’t enjoy too
much fine dining and late-model cars. All they want is to
stay and work in the laboratories; they are like
missionaries,” Roman says.
Instead of
blaming the ongoing scarcity of scientists to the meager
resources provided by the government, the DOST is
collaborating with the government to provide incentives to
scientists. One such activity is the Balik Scientist
Program, which was started by the Marcos government in the
1970s to entice scientists who made breakthroughs in the
field of science and technology overseas to come back to
the
Philippines.
“It is a
meaningful program that gives dignified scientists the
chance to apply the knowledge they knew or bring the
technology they have invented to their homeland,” says the
source.
In the
program, scientists are given relocation and housing
grants, reimbursement allowances for the shipment of their
cars and personal matters, health and accident insurances
and tuition-fee assistance for two direct minor
dependents.
This year,
the DOST was able to convince four scientists to return.
Dr. Aylen Ramos, who created software for impact
assessment in choosing safe sanitary landfills, is one. To
have someone like Ramos stay put is such one big feat,
says the source.
In fact,
the DOST believes it is even more efficient to invest in
the Balik Scientist Program instead of spending more on
research and development. “They already have the brilliant
ideas and developed tools that may change our ways of
living,” the source says. “Research and development takes
an average of three years before a discovery is revealed
because it is expensive and full of trials and errors.
“And if
many [scientists] would come back, they can participate in
nation building in whatever way: they can create business
here, act as consultants, advocate for innovation for
societal improvements. These are the things that we need,”
the source adds.
Still, it
is better to prevent these great minds from leaving the
country in the first place.
“In order
to reverse the mindset of those who opt to leave, the DOST
appeals to the private-sector leaders and the Bureau of
Incentives to create supporting programs for businessmen
and investors who wish to commercialize newborn technology
in the country,” says the DOST official.
Beyond
control
WHILE some
government agencies are able to cope with the brain drain
in whatever way, the public hospitals don’t have much
choice.
The
Philippine General Hospital (PGH), the largest training
hospital in the country, for instance, couldn’t make their
nurses sign a working contract. “We just need to accept
the fact that they might leave someday. Even when they
sign, they leave anyway. If they have visas already, how
can you catch them?” Tan says.
“Most of
the hospitals would want to tie them from three to five
years. But right now, two years is realistic,” he adds.
Moreover,
there is an unequal distribution of nurses, with an
estimated 70 percent of them working in Metro Manila. “The
country’s health sector would not progress if we do not
address [brain drain],” Tan says.
But that’s
easier said than done.
“There are
young and idealist professors who remain,” UP’s Roman
says. “But when they begin to have their own families,
they start thinking which schools they’re going to send
their children to. That’s when they start seeking
high-paying jobs. It’s unfortunate, but it’s something
that we couldn’t control.”
(To be continued.) |
