PALO, Leyte — The Eastern Visayas Regional Development Council (RDC) has formed a committee that will ensure that research and development activities are aligned with regional development thrusts.
In its first meeting Tuesday, the Regional Research, Development and Innovation Committee (RRDIC) assigned specific tasks to state universities and colleges (SUCs) to do research on priority commodities.
“Since there is no committee in the past, we just consolidated research and development priorities from different sectors. We have to make into one and assign specific commodities to each SUCs to really create economic development,” said RRDIC chair Edgardo Esperancilla, Department of Science and Technology (DOST) regional director.
Members of the new committee are regional directors of the Departments of Agriculture, of Environment and Natural Resources, and of Health; Commission on Higher Education; presidents of SUCs and higher education institutions; and chairs of various consortia in the region.
Also included as members are presidents of industry groups with science and technology related advocacies, private sector representatives, officials from the local government units.
The region has existing consortium for agriculture, aquatic resources, health research and development, industry and energy, and emerging technology.
The proposal to create RRDIC was pushed in December 2016. RDC members reviewed the proposal in three quarterly meetings until it was finally approved on December 13, 2017.
Within the first two quarters of the year, the committee will also come up with the proposed Eastern Visayas Regional Research and Development Agenda for the years 2018 to 2022.
Now that new committee was created, Esperancilla is upbeat that more experts will engage in research and development.
With only 667 personnel, Eastern Visayas had the lowest number of R&D workers in the Visayas and the sixth lowest nationwide in 2013. (PNA)
