UPSKILLING OF OFWS PUSHED

The country’s ITPBM (information technology and business process management) has registered considerable growth for the first seven months of the year even with the COVID-19 pandemic that show that the Philippines can still recharge its economic environment.

But Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez said that an upskilling is necessary to increase the employment in this sector which from January to July this year had seen its registered projects grow by 37 percent to P11.4 billion in the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA).

The need for upskilling for the country’s workforce is being pushed by the government and private sectors as a way forward to address the unemployment woes which has risen by a record 17.7 percent or 7.3 million Filipinos.

Acting Socio-Economic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick Chua has been initiating an upskilling for the country’s unemployed.

Marketing whiz Ardee Urbina has also revealed to The Financial District (TFD) a plan to create a pool of OFWs or overseas Filipino workers who have lost their jobs to let them go through a skills training program to make them employable in ITPBM hubs in the country.

Lopez similarly aired this thrust: “What it means also is that you will have to upskill and level up the kind of jobs that we will have to develop to be able to service all these technologies around us,” said Lopez.

Lopez said that despite the growth in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, there will still be manpower to run the machines.

“Yes there are machines that can aid BPOs, but what we have to do is get all these new technologies for greater efficiencies and lowering the cost of ITBPM service,” he added.