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MANILA, Philippines -- Investing in training and skills development for the youth will help save the country’s economy amidst the global economic crisis, the head of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) said Wednesday.
“When you put money into training and skills development, you also get money back because when you have a trained population of young people they get jobs both locally and abroad, they pay taxes, they send remittances to their families so its not a one way street,” TESDA director General Augusto Syjuco, said in a media forum on Wednesday.
Syjuco noted that remittances from overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) make up most of the country’s income. Syjuco said they do not expect these remittances to be gravely affected by the global crisis.
“Our biggest capital is our people. The value and the demand for Filipino workers will not go down,” Syjuco said.
Noting there has been a shift in the demand for skilled workers, Syjuco said TESDA has opened new courses like bartending and spa therapy.
He added that for the next three years, the US territory of Guam will need 20,000 workers, while Canada needs 30,000 skilled laborers, and New Zealand another 20,000.
The Saudi Arabian embassy processes more than a thousand applicants’ passports daily and the demand for Filipino laborers in the Middle East kingdom is still expected to rise, Syjuco said.
The workers most in demand, he said, are in construction (welders, masons, carpenters, heavy equipment operators, among others) and the service sector (cosmetologists, masseurs, haircutters, among others), Syjuco said.
He added that TESDA expects a surge in enrollees for two-year vocational courses in 1,500 private institutions and 125 TESDA-owned schools in 79 provinces.
“We expect more enrollees than we had the last time because now we are far better equipped to receive them, to handle them and to offer them more subjects than we had before, and we have more money now than we had last year,” he said.
