Management of the aquaculture research centers of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) [Philippines]: an assessment

Findings of the study revealed the following: 1. The relationships of duties and responsibilities of the respondents/employees with the organizational structure is well-defined; 2. The respondents/employees agree on the centers/division functioning in accordance with Bureau's programme; 3. The highly and very serious perceived problems of the respondents in the implementation of research projects are the lack of financial support for attendance to scientific meetings/conferences and lack of research equipment, respectively; 4. The highly important solutions to improve the performance are to develop a procedure to eliminate unnecessary work of researchers, formation of a committee to evaluate/screen research proposals, termination of research projects into scientific papers and incentives to deserving performance; 5. The Aquaculture Centers do not have standard organization structure although considered as National Centers for Aquaculture. Likewise, the aquaculture centers lack enough research/technical people to conduct researches and extension services; 6. Some functions of the aquaculture centers are not specific and many species are included in their research and development activities. Tilapia species is the priority of NFFTRC and the other centers must not work anymore on this species, except in some case. There is overlapping of priority species in their research and extension services; 7. The manpower requirements of the National Fisheries Biological Research Center and the National Inland Fisheries Research Center lack personnel to implement their mandate; 8. The award system being implemented to the whole Bureau including the Aquaculture Centers motivate employees to increase efficiency. Other awards system such as the 2-consecutive very satisfactory awards should be implemented; 9. The percentage rate of utilization on their budgets is only 52.45 percent. This low rate may be attributed to the delay in the issuances of the notice of cash allocations; and 10. In terms of the prioritized problems, the age and length of service has significant differences with the lack of skills, training and trained manpower. The sex and civil status has significant differences on the lack of transport services while sex alone has significant differences with the length of time in procurement of supplies/materials