DoLE Holds 2006 National Manpower Summit
By Paul Catiang

On March 2, 2006, the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) held its 2006 National Manpower Summit in cooperation with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) at the Manila Hotel. The event’s highlights include a keynote address by Labor and Employment Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas and a presentation of the summit’s action plan to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

The Nine Key Employment-Generating Sectors
The event’s executive committee Chair, Labor Undersecretary Danilo P. Cruz, announced that the event is geared towards generating the right workers in order to optimize the matching of the country’s skilled human resources with emerging industries locally and globally in cooperation with concerned government agencies, industries, the academe and training institutions.

Cruz said that industry leaders from nine Key Employment Generating sectors of the economy, and the social partners, together with the representatives of government agencies and the training sector will be well-represented at the crucial summit. The Labor Undersecretary identified the nine key employment generating sectors: cyber services, aviation, agribusiness, health services, mining, creative industries, hotels and restaurants, medical tourism, and overseas employment.

He said that the 2006 National Manpower Summit will identify the jobs and competencies that are currently in demand in the short term and in the medium term. For this purpose, the joint DOLE-UNDP effort aims to provide a system that would send appropriate recommendations to schools and training institutions to produce the right workers for emerging industries locally and in the rest of the world.

The Action Plan: Matching Supply to Demand
Cruz noted that such a system had been studied in the course of research and consultations with the nine key employment-generating sectors. "This is in response to the phenomenon of job and skills mismatch, or structural unemployment, where there may be available workers, but many do not match the requirements of emerging occupations or industries," he said.

He stressed that "the situation indicates an information gap between the creator of jobs, which is industry, and the supplier of workers, which are the schools and training institutions." He noted, for instance, that five years ago, the demand for workers in the Philippines’ call or contact center industry was "practically unheard of." However, today "we hear of thousands and thousands of demand for English-speaking, computer literate, workers with the patience and self-confidence for these jobs."

The Undersecretary also emphasized that the demand for the right workers is not limited to the local cyber services sector now considered as an engine of economic growth after the setting up of the country’s 600-mile Cyber Services Corridor in 2005. He said the demand for cyber services workers is projected to reach some 1.083 million in 2010, from some 163,000 employed as of 2005.

"We cannot ignore and must keep pushing forward to realize the opportunities in emerging, key employment generating industries locally and globally if we are to effectively address mismatch and grasp the local and global opportunities for our growing human resources," he said.

Cruz said that the other sectors are also bullish on their skills demand and growth projections that reflect a balance of both local and overseas requirements in areas like medical tourism, aviation, health services, hotels and restaurants, creative industries, and mining.