Training

Training PH workers

October 3, 2021 People's Tonight 555 views

WITH the Technical Education Skills Development Authority (TESDA) around, there should be happy reasons to expect the best after the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.

In fact, the country’s agility to pivot to the post-pandemic economy will depend largely on how the government can train our labor force to meet the demands of the “new world of work.”

And that’s the role of TESDA, a government agency tasked to train Filipino workers, who want to gain new skills needed to get the country back on its feet, according to Sen. Joel Villanueva.

Villanueva, chairman of the Senate labor committee who headed TESDA from 2010 to 2015, said the economy is undergoing “retooling” that requires workers who have been reskilled.

The country’s highly-articulate “Mr. Tesdaman” made the statement during the launch of the “Tulong Trabaho Scholarship Program,” which was attended by some 500 scholars.

Villanueva is principal author and sponsor of Republic Act (RA) No. 11230 or the Tulong Trabaho Scholarship Law which seeks to strengthen the qualifications of Filipino workers.

This is to meet the challenges of the rapidly evolving workplaces as a result of the pandemic. The health crisis has displaced hundreds of thousands of Filipino workers here and abroad.

The government, through TESDA, has been training manpower en masse. In fact, the agency has trained a total of 20 million workers, including women, during the last 10 years.

We believe that TESDA, through its chain of training centers across the country, is capable of producing a large pool of highly-trained graduates of technical-vocational courses.

Thus, TESDA, headed by retired police Gen. Isidro Lapena, deserves the support of the people, including the ordinary citizens, as it trains Filipinos to become highly-productive workers.

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