October 22, 2014
Shrimp school soon to open in the Philippines
The Philippines''s first shrimp school will open in Dagupan City in northern Philippines this month.
The school aims to produce shrimp technicians who can be as skilled as their Chinese and Taiwanese counterparts now lording over many Filipino shrimp farms.
"We accepted already three participants for the first batch of students [10 students per batch] for our shrimp school. We are inviting more applications," said Westly Rosario, chief of the government-owned National Integrated Fisheries Technology Development Center (NIFTDC), founder of the shrimp school.
The first of its kind in the country, the shrimp school will give comprehensive and extensive training using modern facilities in shrimp farming for 90 days to qualified students between 22 and 30 years old. The school prefers graduates of high school, fishery schools or from institutions with Technical Education and Skills Development Authority-accredited courses.
The training is even more comprehensive than the past training programmess implemented by NIFTDC through its facility Asian Fisheries Academy that already graduated some 1,000 students over the years to date, Rosario said.
He added the training programme, as well as lodging in the shrimp school, are free but participants are not provided meals or food allowance. Exceptions are those who come from poor families who could be provided with free meals as special privilege.
Shrimp is one of the higher value species in the world today and the Philippines is being eyed as the best country in the world where shrimp has a very promising future as an export commodity as it is not affected by the Early Mortality Syndrome (EMS) disease.
EMS already affected many shrimp-producing countries like Thailand and Indonesia. The Philippines remains EMS-free to this day, according to Rosario.
That is why shrimp production in the Philippines needs to be maximized to fill the needs of countries whose shrimp requirements cannot be supplied by shrimp exporters hit by EMS, he added.
"The shrimp school seeks to help the country become self-sufficient with shrimp and eventually become a top shrimp exporter."
Rosario said the students will study the protocols for raising peneaus vannamei or white shrimp that he claims is now more popular than the indigenous tiger prawns.
The training not only involves the whole gamut of shrimp production but also includes value formation, business and the economics in shrimp production, Rosario added.
The school adopts the so-called cadre system initially made up of 10 students. After a month, another cadre of trainees will be admitted with the first cadre to be harnessed to help train the next batch of students.