There is something wrong in the matching
process of available jobs, vis a vis
qualified workers. Why is it that with
so many jobs available here and abroad
for various categories of workers, only
a few will meet even minimum requirements? This is a relevant question to be asked on
Tuesday, May 1, as the nation marks LABOR DAY.
Guesting at DYEM Star Energy FM on a pre-Labor
Day show , the Tripartite Industrial Peace Board members
can only surmise that there is an urgent need
for our education department to FOCUS AND MATCH
the subject courses offered nationwide to the ACTUAL
needs of various industries, rather than offer useless
courses that will only add more unemployment to the
new graduates each year.
It was shocking enough to know from the PESO
(Public Employment Service Office) management
under local head Socorro Mira that out of the 6,000
jobs available on the May 1 job fair facilitated by
the government with various employers here and abroad, only ten percent are due for immediate
employment. The rest of the thousands of applicants
are due for rejection, according to track
records of local job fairs. Why is that?
It is because the education department is teaching
students those courses that do not have enough
job openings. The country’s education system has not
also gotten over the wrong concept that white collar
jobs are no longer hotly hirable items, but the blue
collar jobs are. Sad to say, we are back to our parochial
mentality- in believing that there is nothing to
worry because with their family connecitions and with
Mr. Politiko, whom they supported last election, can
help give them jobs. Well, not anymore. One has to
be hired on their own merit, not from somebody else.
Our Filipino applicants are not dull; they simply
lack the proper training and actual exposure
to the job they are applying for. How sad.
It’s time our education officials and policymakers
think about offering courses that will match the need
of labor here and abroad. The DepEd should now revamp,
re-design and re-package our educational system
starting from Grade One.
Whoever coined the idea that K-12 or two more
years in the elementary and high school would be
good for our children has gotten it all wrong. The
more the cost of education rises each year, the
lesser students will enroll and the more the
number of the unemployed will grow.
