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FOR five
years now, the foreign chambers have been telling the
government and academe that the skills being produced in
the country do not match the needs of the industries.
And when
they open another employment expo on Wednesday at the
TriNoma Activity Center in Quezon City, they already
expect to get the same feedback from the participating
firms: They believe nothing significant has been done
thus far to attune the talent coming out of schools with
what employers require.
“We are
seeing that as recurring: There are lots of jobs out
there but you are not producing the right students for
them,” Leslie Stokes of the British Chamber of Commerce
of the Philippines said.
Henry
Schumacher, executive vice president of the European
Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines, is pushing for
interim solutions to the job-skills mismatch problem, as
they believe that structural changes needed to elevate
the quality of education in the country would take 10
years to bear fruit, “and the investors will not wait
that long.”
The
results from the last Foreign Chambers Employment Expo
at the Glorietta Activity Center in April were very
telling—only four companies said they managed to hire
somebody on the spot and 44 said they did not.
Schumacher said it is obvious that the level of
education in the country has gone down over the years.
The alarming situation prompted them to have discussions
with some sectors who share the view that changes should
be made in the educational system and curriculum, “but
it will take 10 years until you see progress.”
“We
can’t wait for 10 years. The jobs would have already
gone somewhere else by then,” Schumacher said.
The
private sector and the government should put in place
solutions to remedy the problem in the short term while
structural changes are being pursued at the level of the
Department of Education (DepEd).
One
interim solution, Schumacher said, is extending the
on-the-job- training (OJT) hours from the current
average of 100 hours to at least 350 hours.
By
intervening in the last days of students in school, the
foreign businessmen believe they can get the students
really involved in the process and develop their
potential to be hired.
He also
suggested that companies take in trainees more than the
number they require for hiring, and get them available
for other firms.
In doing
this, Schumacher said, the government must do its share
by allowing participating firms to get double tax
deductions for the cost they incurred for training more
people.
“We need
tax incentives to entice companies to train more,” he
said. The group has not received any positive reply
from the government on this yet, according to him.
The
Commission on Higher Education was also prodded to issue
a directive pushing universities to tie up with
industries in coming up with longer OJT hours for their
students.
Today’s
two-day expo at Trinoma will be formally opened by top
officials of the American, Australian-New Zealand ,
British, Canadian, and European chambers of commerce
together with Labor Undersecretary Luzviminda Padilla
and Quezon City Vice Mayor Herbert Bautista.
Open to
the public for free, individuals seeking employment are
again advised to come in their business attire and bring
soft and hard copies of their résumé. |
