MANILA, Philippines – Thousands of Filipinos who are seeking jobs in Information Technology-Business Process Outsourcing (IT-BPO) but lack skills to qualify will now have a better chance with the expansion of a training program by government.
The Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) and the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP) signed a memorandum of agreement on Thursday on the P500-million expansion of the IT-BPO Industry-Based Training for Work Scholarship Program for 65,000 “near hires.”
The program aims to help applicants acquire new skills needed to qualify for jobs in the IT-BPO industry. The expansion of the program came after President Aquino approved the additional P500-million budget.
“The Filipino knowledge worker is already internationally recognized as world-class, and we are now universally recognized as number one in the world in voice or call centers,” said BPAP Chairman Alfredo Ayala.
“Our big opportunity is to leverage this success and become the number one destination for IT-BPO in general. TESDA’s innovative program helps us to achieve this goal by directly addressing our biggest constraint, the supply of talent,” he added.
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. It will be implemented nationwide.
TESDA designated BPAP to help manage P400 million of the additional funds in collaboration with its partners: the Animation Council of the Philippines, the Call Center Association of the Philippines, the Game Development Association of the Philippines, the Healthcare Information Management Association of the Philippines, the National ICT Confederation of the Philippinesand the Philippine Software Industry Association.
TESDA Director General Joel Villanueva said, “Our training will give the scholars the crucial skill sets they need, and help improve the odds for them to be hired.”
The additional funding for the training program is a key initial component of the government and the IT-BPO industry’s Roadmap 2016 to increase total industry generated jobs to 4.5 million in 2016 from 1.8 million in 2010, and exports to $25 billion in 2016 from $9 billion last year.
“For the employment and the revenue potential of the industry, we view this as a reasonable investment by the government,” said Budget Secretary Florencio Abad.
“The same government-industry partnership is going to be entered into with the five primary industries identified by the Aquino administration as drivers of employment and growth, which are agriculture and fisheries, tourism, general infrastructure, semiconductor and electronics,” he added.
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Source: ABS-CBN News, October 22, 2011
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