Cedfit work-scholarship program gets P5M grant

CEBU, Philippines - The Cebu Educational Development Foundation for Information Technology Inc. (Cedfit) was granted a P5 million budget from the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) to address the manpower shortage in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector here.

Cedfit executive director Jun Sa-a said that the P5 million is part of the P500 million budget given by the government through the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) and Business Process Association of the Philippines (BPAP) joint program called “Training-for-work-scholarship Program” or TWSP.

This budget, although way below the proposed P23 million ideal allocation for Cebu on this particular program, would already benefit at least 1,000 near-hire trainees of BPO training programs, Sa-a said.

The P5 million allocation for Cebu will come as “vouchers” to be awarded to Cedfit member BPOs, that have existing near-hire training programs.

On the average, the cost per head for a BPO crash-course training is P5,000. Sa-a said if the proposed budget of P23 million for Cebu was approved it could have benefited about 3,700 potential employees for BPO.

Based on a survey done by Cedfit, Cebu’s major BPO companies, mostly call centers need at least 3,500 more workers between the months of October to December this year.

“We hope that this will not be a one-time support from the government, to aid the growing BPO sector and increase employment opportunities for Filipinos,” Sa-a said.

Cedfit is a consortium of industry, academe, government and non-government organizations (NGOs), which seeks to increase the quantity and improve the quality of professionals or practioners in the Information Technology and Communication (ICT), and ICT-enabled services industry through pro-active intervention in the human resource (HR) development sector.

Sa-a said leading BPO companies in Cebu, such as Aegis People Support, Qualfone, Convergys and Stream Global, are one of the identified beneficiaries of the fund, due to their existing TESDA-approved near-hire training program.

 Because Cedfit is mandated to develop the HR capability of Cebu to sustain the growth of ICT and BPO sectors, the organization also has existing training programs geared towards developing more skilled BPO workforce, not only for contact centers, but also includes a wide spectrum of outsourcing field like software and hardware development.

Now on its 10th year, Cedfit maintains Professional Certification, Training and Review Center facility at the Ayala-owned Cebu I.T. Park.

The Professional Certification, Training and Review Center is one of Cedfit’s flagship projects. Together with academic institutions and other entitites involved in the IT industry, the center aims to undertake the establishment of occupational and proficiency standards for IT professionals. (FREEMAN)