City to hold local, overseas jobs fairs

CEBU - Amid the global economic crisis, the Cebu City Government is offering hope for the unemployed and displaced workers as it had scheduled at least 14 venues for employment opportunities for the year 2009.

Edna Jaca, officer-in-charge of the City Hall’s Department of Manpower Development and Placement (DMDP), said they already scheduled three major local job fairs, one overseas job fair, six local hiring and six barangay job fairs for this year.

The DMDP needs a funding of P599,000 to bring all resources together for their implementation.

According to Jaca, the three local job fairs are to be conducted on March 21, June 20 and November 7 while the overseas job fair will be held in line with the celebration of the Labor Day on May 1.

On the other hand, she added that special local hirings are scheduled on a prolonged period mostly at their office at Ramos Public Market, although they may opt to tie up with other entities for other venues.

There will also be six barangay job fairs, with three of them scheduled in the month of April, May and July. The host barangays or venues are yet to be announced. Amid the series of workers retrenchments implemented by several companies, Jaca said DMDP hopes they could fill in at least 25 percent of the job losses.

However, she added that they expected lesser jobs this year compared with last year where 19,458 job vacancies were filled.

Jaca said the affected business sectors such as manufacturing firms may be compensated with the boom in other areas like the South Road Properties which is expected to offer thousand of job opportunities to Cebuanos. — Ferliza C. Contratista/WAB   (THE FREEMAN)