If you pay peanuts…

Five years ago, I was part of a special committee that reviewed the Philippine Statistical System (PSS). Among our disturbing findings was the lack of professional statisticians in the five main government statistical agencies, namely the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB), National Statistics Office (NSO), Statistics Research and Training Center (SRTC), Bureau of Agricultural Statistics (BAS) and Bureau of Labor and Employment Statistics (BLES). Our report observed: “The PSS has hardly been attractive to professional statisticians. Only one person among the six major statistical agencies has a PhD in Statistics. Other doctoral degree holders in the major statistical agencies (11 for NSO and two for BAS) have degrees in fields other than statistics.”

The report further lamented: “While the SRTC’s major mandate is to conduct research, its current personnel lack qualifications to take the lead in statistical research. The highest postgraduate degree in statistics of its current personnel is a Master of Statistics (MoS) degree. At NSO, the majority of statistics-related postgraduate degrees are either MoS or Master of Applied Statistics (MAS), which is insufficient for undertaking studies to introduce new and innovative methodologies.” We also found that of 30 BAS personnel sent to the University of the Philippines for MoS degrees in the 1990s, many had since left for better-paid positions elsewhere.

Given the ever-increasing demands on our government statisticians to produce quality and timely data that are so critical to evidence-based policymaking, we need many more highly qualified statisticians in government. So where have they all gone? Well, they happen to be in such high demand in the finance, public relations and other service industries, where the salaries they fetch make the pay they would get in government statistical agencies look like peanuts.

In recent weeks I have written on the critical state of civil aviation in the country. Beyond airport brawls, unused passenger tubes and persistent flight delays, lives have been put at risk because we do not meet minimum world air safety standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The country has thus been in Category 2 status with the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) since 2008. This has been used by other countries to ban our air carriers, and this keeps us from attracting more inward flights, hence more tourists. According to reports on the last visit by US FAA inspectors, one crucial issue concerns “low and inadequate qualifications and training” of Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) technical personnel who conduct aircraft worthiness checks and airline pilot skills tests. Also of serious concern were anomalies in the issuance of operating or compliance certificates to air operators and airworthiness certificates to aircraft owners, again due to lack of qualified CAAP technical personnel. We also lack qualified air traffic controllers, those people who man the control towers and in whose hands lie thousands of lives daily.

Where are all the qualified personnel for the above critical tasks to ensure the safety of our skies? Where else, but with the various airlines here and abroad, that need their services as much as government does, and that pay them salaries far more than what our government could pay them.

The debate on the upsides and downsides of the mining industry has been a particularly acrimonious one, especially in recent weeks. Government is due to announce a “new mining policy” anytime now, and it will no doubt assert the need to ensure responsible mining. We could draw up all the rules we want to keep the industry responsible, but in the end, is the government equipped to even monitor compliance with those rules, much less enforce them? The government agency tasked to do that is the first to admit that it lacks the personnel with the specialized skills required for the job—geologists, mining engineers and metallurgical engineers.

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources recently reported that 120 positions for geologists in the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) have yet to be filled, far more than the 88 currently working there. Environment Secretary Ramon Paje recently lamented: “The number of geologists who chose to stay and work with us is barely enough to handle the increasing work load, particularly on geo-hazard mapping and assessment, which has become a necessity due to climate change.” It doesn’t take much to figure out where our best geologists and mining and metallurgical engineers are—working for the mining firms here and abroad, of course, and earning salaries that again make the pay that MGB could offer mere peanuts.

If the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas has been doing a good job managing our monetary policy over the years, there is at least one important reason for that. Being exempt from the government’s Salary Standardization Law (SSL), BSP has been able to offer attractive compensation to qualified finance professionals—and yes, statisticians too—who would otherwise be snapped up by the very institutions they must regulate. It is high time that government considered the unique situation that our regulatory and statistical bodies are in, and gave them enough leeway to go beyond SSL to be able to attract the highly demanded skills they badly need to fulfill their mandates well.

Otherwise, as the saying goes, if you pay peanuts, you’ll get monkeys. Or (in fairness to those competent and dedicated civil servants out there) self-sacrificing (and starving) idealists.  They are, however, a rare breed.

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E-mail: cielito.habito@gmail.com