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By Jose Angelo D. Cantera,
Special To The Manila Times
Like most scientists in the
Philippines, physicist Dr. Giovanni Tapang, chairman of the Agham
collective and faculty member of the University of the Philippines,
believes that it is very hard to live a life devoted to science and
technology here.
The collective is a group of
scientists and researchers, formally called AGHAM, the Filipino word
for science.
Dr. Tapang’s views have not
changed three years after publishing Prometheus Bound, Agham’s
study on the plight of Filipino scientists—particularly those
working in research and development. That study raised issues such
as scientists’ lack of resources and economic independence as
reasons for the dismal state of Filipino scientific research.
Great ideas,
puny resources
“The biggest problem here in
the Philippines for researchers is still the question of
resources,” said Dr. Tapang. “Historically, the budget of the
Department of Science and Technology [DOST] is low and the problem
is, if you have great ideas but have puny or no resources, you
wouldn’t be able to execute them.”
Sen. Edgardo Angara, an expert on
industry, agriculture and national development, holds somewhat
similar views.
In a statement he issued during
the 75th Anniversary of the National Research Council of the
Philippines two weeks ago, Angara said the present guidelines of the
Science and Technology department allow a principal scientific
investigator to receive a monthly allowance of P3,000 and nothing
else.
“As a result,” explained
Angara, “we have scientists who, instead of spending their time
making discoveries in the lab or monitoring young scientists, spend
most of their time in an office writing grant applications. Or
often, they scrounge around for other sources of income. This is not
a very effective use of their talents.”
Recently, however, the
department’s budget has almost been doubled—from P2.7 billion to
P5.27 billion. Dr. Tapang, however, still maintains that the
improvements when it comes to budget are still very inconsistent.
Lack of basic industries
Dr. Tapang decried the lack of
basic industries needed for an optimum utilization of the findings
of Filipino researchers.
“The problem with the
Philippines is that we’re not building our industries,” he said.
“We don’t have basic industries that can benefit from Philippine
research. You can go to them [as a researcher], but Filipino
industries do little or no research. It’s cheaper for them to
import something new than to hire a scientist, a researcher or an
engineer, for that matter, to do the job.”
As a result, Filipino researchers
usually go to multinational corporations that don’t retain the
intellectual products churned by the homegrown researcher in the
country, nor use it for the country’s development. The locally
done research gets to be owned by the multinational firm. Even if a
product does get developed as a result of the local research and
utilized in the country, the process itself takes up a very long
time.
To cite an example, Dr. Tapang
said that if a scientist developed a better cellular-phone
algorithm, he or she will still have to sell it to international
industries like Nokia for the idea to be assessed and
validated—and only then, turned into a product.
While research in the UP is
world-class, Dr. Tapang said, the researchers still need basic
components not produced in the Philippines but imported to complete
their prototypes.
Because government and the
private sector have not developed our own industries, the
Philippines continues to be mainly a producer and exporter of raw
materials needed to produce industrial products which Filipinos then
import—like equipment used in mining and factories. Filipino
miners are able to extract metallic ores, but the lack of industries
here in the Philippines still requires some types of ore to be
exported and processed in other countries. Then consumers here buy
the finished product.
The lack of industries also has
effects on science and technology manpower.
As told in Prometheus Bound, data
from the Science and Technology department show that from 1987 to
1997, there were only an average of 152 scientists and engineers per
million Filipinos involved in research and development. This is less
than half of the UN-recommended 380 per million population. Also,
there were only 22 technicians per million Filipinos.
Other countries fared better.
From 1990 to 1997, Japan had 5,561 scientists and engineers and 864
technicians per million Japanese. South Korea also surpassed
everyone, having 2,274 scientists and engineers and 223 technicians
per million South Koreans.
The study also reported that the
Philippine educational system produced a disappointing number of
graduates with science and engineering skills. It shows that from
1994 to 2001, enrollment in engineering averaged 312,023 students
yearly, or about 14 percent of the total enrollees. Mathematics and
information technology enrollees were about 7 percent of total, and
natural sciences attracts only 1 percent.
What can be done?
Dr. Tapang believes that economic
independence and autonomy are still the primary solutions to the
problems faced by research and development in the Philippines.
“Every country in its right
mind would desire economic independence,” he said. “A good
example of this would be the rice crisis. Now we are dependent on
other countries like Cambodia for our supply of rice. Should prices
increase, we will have problems. So, from a science and technology
point of view, why don’t we develop our agriculture and the
industries serving agriculture to meet, at least, the minimum
requirements?”
Dr. Tapang also believes that the
government should encourage more domestic, rather than foreign,
investors in order to focus most of the development work and
discoveries to what we need in our country.
As he concluded with peers in
Prometheus Bound, “National industrialization is an imperative to
alter the neocolonial pattern of production, investments and trade
based mainly on the export of agricultural and extractive raw
materials, the import of finished goods, agricultural commodities
and capital, and the re-export of reassembled or repackaged imported
manufactures.”
Angara also believes that it is
important for the government to give better incentives to keep our
scientists in the country. Scientists should be provided with a
respectable level of flexibility for them to set and pursue
different research agenda, and more venues for healthy competition
in order to inspire them to strive for improvement.
There should be more networks
like the Philippine Research, Education and Government Information
Network to connect local scientists with fellow scientists here and
abroad. Government and private industry should help scientists
access inter-disciplinary and inter-institutional linkages with our
traditional and non-traditional partners.
Both Dr. Tapang and Angara
believe science and technology can be fully developed and used to
the fullest extent to benefit the people if fundamental obstacles,
mainly economic and political, are completely dismantled.
Editor’s note: Mr. Cantera is a
student of The Manila Times College.
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