Prioritizing vulnerable groups, such as youth, women, indigenous peoples, and those with disabilities, is crucial to address the access gap in skills development programs, according to experts from the International Labour Organization (ILO).
“We still see that vulnerable groups cannot access or benefit from free skills development programs for practical reasons,”said Katherine B. Brimon, ILO senior project officer, in an interview with BusinessWorld on Monday.
“There is a tendency to forget that these groups have multi-fold responsibilities in care and farming,” she added. “Gender and social inclusions have to be embedded in the model.”
The ILO and the United Kingdom supported a skills development program in the country called the Skills for Prosperity Programme in the Philippines (SfP). The four-year program, which started in November 2019, offered industry-responsive technical vocational education and training (TVET) to underprivileged communities.
The SfP in the Philippines reported that it had 6,197 direct beneficiaries, 58% of whom were women, over its four-year implementation across Visayan provinces. When considering the families of the beneficiaries, the program supported a total of 57,857 people.
Priority industries in the Visayan areas included agriculture and construction, according to Ms. Brimon.
“We need to ensure that national TVET and skills systems are inclusive and responsive to industry needs,” Khalid Hassan, director of the ILO country office for the Philippines, said in a press statement.
“We need to equip workers with the right skills set so they can enjoy better job prospects,” he added.
“A carpenter, mason, or plumber, for example, would receive hands-on training that would eventually set them on the road to become master carpenters, master masons, or master plumbers or even entrepreneurs offering construction services,” SfP-Philippines said on its program operations.
Ms. Brimon noted that 23 out of 24 barangays in Libacao, Aklan, produce abaca, a native banana species known for its fiber, where its people were taught to grade and classify the product.
Abaca farmers and processors from the Akeanon Bukidnon of Libacao were then able to sell a kilogram of graded abaca for P43-100, up from P25-37, which was unclassified.
Additionally, construction workers in Cebu underwent training for skills certification to support the region’s industrialization pathway, Ms. Brimon said.
At the same time, she noted that the program also aimed to introduce models and ways to improve labor policies in the country.
This included a review of existing international, national, and regional TVET financing and delivery mechanisms, alongside the mapping of in-country public-private partnerships on such. — Miguel Hanz L. Antivola