There is an important observation I often make when listening to a presentation made by an official of a government agency. And this is the fact that the presenter is not telling the other side of the story. By “the other side”, I refer to something about the subject matter that the person making the presentation is not mentioning. In the Regional Development Council, where I am a private sector representative, I have noticed that I often ask for clarification because there is something unsaid that the person making the presentation would rather not talk about but that deserves to be known by the public.
Some of these observations would include my observation that while all the State Universities and a College in Eastern Visayas are on the coast, rarely do they have a major emphasis on courses that offer fisheries development. I asked a university in Samar last year that there seems to be no notable project proposal on the fisheries sector even though production in this aspect of the economy has been declining.
The answer given by the State University is that they are waiting for the private sector to help them. They had a few million pesos allocated for an international convention but almost nothing for the fishery courses.
There is a lot that can be done in this sector, but the courses do not appear enticing enough to put resources on. They say their students want employment, so they offer nursing and criminology courses. They did this instead of focusing on increasing fisheries production through, for example, innovative technologies arising from their research. After all, these schools were elevated from college-level status to universities because they intended to do more research.
In this regard there is now a frenzy to offer nursing and medical courses and set up medical centers in all the State universities in Eastern Visayas. These are courses that are capital intensive, meaning they would need huge investments in hospitals and a substantial budget for equipment and personnel. This is a phenomenon worth studying : is there a direct relationship between the number of graduates in nursing and medicine and the economic development of the areas where these universities are situated?
How much is the investment of the government per graduate and is this recovered by the ability of the area to improve economic production?
These schools are engaged in a balancing act. Certainly, other courses in these educational institutions cater to other sectors of the economy. These should not be neglected.
Of course, there is another phenomenon worth highlighting: the huge increase in the projects being implemented by the DPWH. This Department is already unable to meet all the implementation readiness requirements and yet it is relied upon up by other government agencies to implement the infra component of their budgets. These agencies include DA, DAR, DOH, DepEd, DTI, and DOT. When I mentioned this in a meeting attended by several agencies including the DPWH, the latter just made a plea to other agencies to satisfy the requirements that would make these projects ready for implementation and they will do the rest, that is, implement them.
I am not sure whether this is a sound suggestion. The people who will make the plans will simply turn over the task of implementing them to DPWH. If there are implementation problems who will take the responsibility? DPWH can always point a finger at the agency that gave the plans to them. In the same manner, the DPWH will blame the agency funding the project for many reasons like inappropriate design, defects in the program of work, and insufficient funds to complete the project.
Maybe that is how it is in government. When you think that everything is in order like there are so many funds for projects, many implementation problems crop up.
Here I cango back to my favorite topic: the Tacloban Airport Development Project. This project does not suffer from insufficient funding, yet it is delayed by two years. There is an economic loss for this delay in terms of loss of inflow of funds which tourists will spend while visiting which in turn results in jobs and incomes.
As I noted, when you think the story is about a problem being solved, there is always another side pointing to a new problem.
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