Ceramics-making as a business, anyone?

By January 19, 2015Business, News

LINGAYEN—The new president of the Pangasinan State University (PSU) is bent on reviving the dying ceramics industry in the province yet the course in PSU presently only has nine students enrolled, to promote Pangasinan culture and heritage.

Dr. Dexter Buted, who assumed his post last Dec. 9, said ceramics-making as a course in the PSU campus in western part of Pangasinan is dying. “I want to revive it,” he said.

Buted said he earned the support of Deputy Director General of Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) Teodoro Pascua from Asingan town for his plan to put up a ceramics factory.

“The ceramics can help improve the livelihood programs of the local government so I want to revive it and I got the support of TESDA by taking charge of the new equipment needed in the ceramics making,” he said.

White clay is available in Infanta town.

Buted said he plans to talk with the mayors, municipal and city councils to support their out-of-school youths to bring them to PSU.

He said he envisions that when the nine enrollees in ceramics course soon graduate, they should be skilled to form a cooperative and the effects. He is confident the with the PSU helping in the promotion of their outputs with the help of the Department of Science and Technology, the impact will cascade down to the communities.

He added that most of those enrolled are poor, so support is needed to make them become managers of their own business later.

“We can also partner with our Provincial Tourism Office because these (products) also express our culture and heritage,” he added.

Buted noted that jars for making bagoong, pottery and stoves in cooking used in Pangasinan are made of ceramics.

He said there are a wide variety of ceramic products displayed in the PSU western campus that impressed him giving credit to the ceramics teachers but lamented their students still rely on manual craftsmanship obviously in the absence modern equipment and tools.

“They are already good so how much more if they have the machines,” he said. (Tita Roces)

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