President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. (PBBM) welcomes the plan to implement the Private Sector Jobs and Skills Corp (PSJSC) to reform the skills of the Filipino workforce, address jobs, the mismatch of skills, and provide additional employment for the Filipinos.
In the meeting with the Private Sector Advisory Council-Job Sector Group (PSAC-JSG) on 18 May 2023 at Malacañang, PBBM emphasized the need for the collaboration of the government and private sector to generate more jobs.
The PSJSC (as proposed by the PSAC-JSG) aims to serve as a private sector-led coordinating partnership between the government, industry, and the academe to address the jobs and skills mismatch in the country. A current study made by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) showed that 40% of employed Filipinos have academic credentials beyond what is needed in their jobs.
PBBM instructed the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), the Department of Education (DepEd), the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) to join with the PSAC-JSG in setting the system on how to expand collaboration to lessen the jobs and skills mismatch problem in the priority sectors.
Further, the PSJSC implementation was supported and endorsed by Cabinet members present during the meeting, namely DOLE Secretary Bienvenido Laguesma, NEDA Secretary Arsenio Balisacan, and DTI Secretary Alfredo Pascual.
In a statement, the Presidential Communications Office (PCO) highlighted the PSJSC’s mission to have a well-coordinated government-industry-academe national movement to solve the jobs and skills mismatch problem, together with NEDA, PIDS, the Department of Science and Technology (DOST), and the Philippine Regulatory Commission (PRC). This goal is to support and align industry demands with the government’s education and skills training programs to further build up the labor force’s skills development efforts.
Additionally, the PSAC-JSG proposed the signing of a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) among the planned PCSJS, member agencies of the Philippine Skills Framework Council, and other related government sectors to coordinate efforts to address jobs and skills mismatch through research, review of academic programs, inventory of job specifications, skills, and training requirements among others.
The Export Development Council-Networking Committee on Education and Human Resource Development (EDC-NCEHRD) who is chaired by Dr. Eduardo G. Ong, is currently having the same advocacy collaborating the public-private partnership between the government, academe, industry, to address issues of the jobs, and skills mismatch of the country. JVL