Training for real jobs

TESDA training programs are designed to enable trainees to learn and master the competencies needed for a job.

A few years back, TESDA launched a special scholarship program called Training for Work Scholarship Program (TWSP) that covered priority sectors where there was a skills shortage. Every scholar graduate of the program was expected to land a job immediately after training. They were assisted in finding employment through TESDA’s jobs bridging services.

Director Elizabeth Manio of TESDA Zambales reported recently on the successful jobs bridging services of her office in partnership with local government units, employers, industry associations, and technical-vocational institutions.

Manio quickly found job opportunities for Zambaleños in the impending transfer of the US military base from Okinawa, Japan to Guam, USA. The transfer, says Manio, will cause the relocation of 8,000 US Marines and 10,000 dependents to Guam by 2014. Buildup-related construction projects- headquarters building, aviation utilities, fire station, wharf improvements and seawall repairs, and vehicle maintenance facility- already started last year. The buildup projects and the transfer to the new facility will require around 15,000 to 20,000 workers.

Task Force Guam

To ensure participation of workers and businessmen from Olongapo City in the Guam buildup projects, City Mayor Bong Gordon created Task Force Guam in 2009 and designated City Councilor Ed Piano as head of the group.

TESDA’s involvement in the work of the task force was in the profiling, training and retraining, and skills assessment and certification of the candidate workers. It made use of two profiling instruments- Youth Profiling for Starring Careers (YP4SC) and National Career Assessment Examination (NCAE).

Blue desks were setup as information sources for these services at the TESDA Provincial Office in Olongapo City, Zambales Training Center in Iba, SBMA Labor Desk at Subic Freeport Zone, and 30 other locations in private training institutions.

Aside from the school and center-based training programs, TESDA sourced out additional labor pool through enterprise-based and community-based programs including apprenticeship and learnership.

TESDA’s jobs bridging interventions are meant to make full and immediate use of the graduate trainees’ newly acquired competencies in the workplace. These graduates need help to make them more “wanted” by employers here and abroad.

The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) and the Bureau of Local Employment (BLE) and their accredited recruitment agencies are TESDA’s reliable partners in finding jobs here and abroad for technical-vocational training graduates.

In addition to training, retraining and skills upgrading, other jobs bridging services of TESDA include workplace language and culture training, and skills assessment and certification.