‘Cyber job’ Mismatch Alarms Labor Execs
By Jerome Aning

FOR EVERY Filipino college graduate who lands a job as a call center agent, there are five “near-hires,” unable to make it mainly because of lack of proficiency in the English language.

According to Information and Communications Technology Commissioner Damian Mapa, this statistic could only worsen unless government and the private sector join efforts to curb job rejection due to poor English language skills.

Mapa said that with the projected 1.083 million jobs in cyber services in the next five years, crucial preparations are needed to provide the right skills for interested young Filipinos who will be among the 2.4 million graduates this year until 2010.

The Department of Labor and Employment is hosting on Thursday a National Manpower Summit to address widespread job-skills mismatch, alarming “brain-drain” and the uneven geographical distribution of vacancies in nine emerging industries.

The gathering will be attended by employers and investors, academicians and skills trainers.

“We have many available workers, but many do not match the requirements of emerging occupations,” said undersecretary for employment Danilo Cruz, who heads the summit’s executive committee.

“The situation indicates an information gap between the creator of jobs, which is the industry, and the supplier of workers, which are the schools and training institutions,” Cruz added.

He said there remained a big demand for English-speaking, computer-literate, self-confident and patient workers who are willing to take on the graveyard shift.

“Four years ago, this type of demand for workers was practically unheard of. In fact, just two years ago, all we knew was that there would be demand for English-speaking workers, period,” he said.

The shortage of qualified workers in the call center labor market was becoming so serious that some locators were threatening to pull out, the labor official added.

* * *

This article was originally published in the Inquirer, Wednesday, March 2, 2006, http://news.inq7.net/infotech/index.php?index=1&story_id=68055.