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Friday, September 30, 2005
Good economy to end brain drain
The country would not bleed with brain drain if its economy is good.
That’s an obvious and acceptable reason for the number of Filipino workers from different sectors that leave the country to work abroad, said Jose Mari Bigornia, president of the College of Technological Sciences-Cebu, in an interview yesterday.
“There would be no brain drain problem if our country has political and economic stability to give our workers a good working environment,” he said.
Cebu, in particular, still has enough number of good information technology workers. However, they just don’t have enough job opportunities, the reason they work elsewhere, he added.
Bigornia, also one of the trustees of the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said, however, that healthcare practitioners are notably leaving the country.
A report from the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism last March mentioned that close to 90,000 Filipino nurses were deployed abroad in the last 10 years while 3,500 Filipino doctors left the country to take on nursing jobs overseas in the last four years.
Declining
Maribel Du, president of Philippine College of Surgeons-Cebu and Eastern Visayas Chapter, said, in a separate interview, that Cebu still has enough doctors. She admitted, however, that the number of medical trainees is declining.
“If that continues, it might cause a problem in the future. However, we cannot hold them back if they work abroad for economic reasons. It’s a personal choice they make for personal reasons,” she said.
Personnel Management Association of the Philippines executive director Gerardo Plana also said the economic reason of Filipino workers leaving the country is legitimate.
“In fact, they are major contributors to our country’s economy by the remittances that they send,” he said.
Plana, however, cautioned that “there must be a balance.”
He said a commission called the National HR (human resource) Agenda that would give a venue for HR practitioners to meet and discuss issues of human resource should be created.
Management
“An integrated human resource management plan for the country is a need.
What exactly do we want to do with our human resource? With the brain drain issue, up to what point do we allow doctors to become nurses and drain our medical human resource in the country? This could be a potential problem in the country,” he said in a press conference.
Bigornia, however, maintained that a national HR agenda still would not serve its purpose if the country’s economy remains shaky.
“Putting food in the mouth of each man’s family would always be the top priority. Again, it boils to down to the main problem—our economy,” he told Sun.Star Cebu. (ALC)
(September 30, 2005 issue)
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