WITH the fast and numerous infrastructure developments in the city, Philippine Institute of Civil Engineers (Pice) Davao City Chapter (DCC) warns of possible manpower shortage in the coming years especially of civil engineers.

According to Pice-DCC Board of Director engineer Eddie Fuentes with the many projects in the Philippines right now, the country is most likely to experience shortage of engineers in a few years as some of the best graduates opt to go abroad.

As of 2015, in the data provided by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), there are 385,000 Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) coming from Mindanao with 9 percent of these professionals, which include the engineers.

Laborers and unskilled workers remain to be the most exported human resource from Mindanao with 46 percent of the recorded OFWs from the island.

“We hope that these local engineers be given incentives by the government so they wouldn’t need to go out the country to earn and buy decent housing,” said Fuentes adding that housing is still the primary reason why our skilled engineers go out the country to earn more especially those who are starting up.

It was earlier reported that from President Rodrigo Duterte’s visit and talk with Chinese president Xi Jinping, Filipino professionals in China are going to be in-demand including teachers and engineers.

Also, Filipino engineers had previously been reported to stand out compared with other engineers and other construction-related profession in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.