THE Davao Inventors Association (DIA) once again called on government to support local inventors by putting up a specific section in all regional offices of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) that addresses the interest of the innovators.
DIA president Virgilio Sangutan on Monday expressed his disappointment with the apparent continued lack of support of the government to local investors as there is still no agency in the regions that would help inventors to level up their innovations.
Sangutan said that the Technology Application and Promotion Institute (Tapi) under DOST that cater the affairs of Filipino inventors is only based in the capital region, therefore, inventors in the far-flung provinces has a limited access to mainstream their inventions.
“Our demand is in every regional office of DOST there should be a table or section that focuses on local inventors so that those in the provinces may mapupuntahan,” he said.
In previous administration, there are agencies that concentrated on assisting investors such as the National Science Development Board (NSDB) and National Science and Technology Authority (NSTA) however, he claimed that when Former President Corazon Aquino came to power and renamed it to DOST, the focus on inventors and scientist has gone.
He said the solution to improve the socio-economic status of the country is to focus more and support the local inventors as he cited for instance in South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam which are now leading when it comes to innovations because of their government’s thrust in boosting the morale of their investors to create more technologies.
“Local technology development is what the country’s needed now,” he said.
In the country, there are around 900 inventors and scientist and of this figure 40 of these are from Davao City.
“We can’t blame DOST because the budgeting itself does not focus on research and development assistance,” he said.
Likewise he urged the congress to pay attention and allocate budget to support local technologies and address their plight as it will help in putting the Philippine technologies in the global market and alleviate the innovation status of the country.
This is also in line with the campaign of President Rodrigo Duterte in promoting federalism that will help third class municipalities to improve and have an inclusive growth.
“True federalism is the socio and economic progress and development countrywide,” he said.
The country, he said has a huge potentials considering the skills of the Filipinos, however, because of the insufficient support, we are left behind when it comes to innovation index thus the support of the government is highly needed as the country is now bent in transforming the country to be industrialized.