40-M new skilled jobs seen from Asean bloc

The creation of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) likely by the end of the year would create 40 million new jobs but these would be mostly for skilled workers that may result in the shortage of skilled labor in the region, an official of the International Labor Organization (ILO) said.

Yoshiteru Uramoto, Assistant Director-General and Regional Director, Asia-Pacific of the ILO, said the integration of economies in the Southeast Asian region would aggravate the gap on skilled jobs and available labor.

Uramoto said integration have opened up only mainly the professional sectors within the region that would leave out medium and low-skilled workers.

Pierre Tami, Founder of social enterprise Hagar International in Cambodia, said that to produce skilled labor, the government or the private sector should be prepared to spend for this.

He said that based on his experience in Cambodia, everybody recognize the need for skills training but no one is willing to spend to make it possible.

Social Welfare Secretary Corazon “Dinky” Soliman said in the Philippines there is already a coordination between private companies and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) to address the skills gap.

For instance, she mentioned an agreement between TESDA and the Business Process Outsourcing Association of the Philippines (BPAP) to provide work scholarship program to improve the skills of so-called “near hires” in the BPO industry.

Aside from voice, the training program covers important segments of non-voice BPO such as legal, health care information management, publishing, animation, game development, and software development.

The program is being implemented nationwide.

Soliman said the government is undertaking similar agreements in other industries to improve the skills of Filipino workers.

She added that the government’s implementation of the K-12 education curriculum was also among the steps taken to attune Filipino students to the needs of industries and thus assure their employment upon graduation.

“The biggest challenge, however, is in the agriculture sector where skills improvement need to be worked on since the Philippines remains basically an agricultural country,” she added.

Soliman said the Aquino administration’s conditional cash transfer (CCT) program involves uplifting the condition of the poor to allow them the opportunity for education and better jobs.

She said the CCT or the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) now cover 4.2 million Filipino families that include 10 million children.