MANILA, Philippines (Updated 11:51 a.m.; May 1, 2019) — A staggering 1.35 million senior high school students who chose vocational courses as well as college graduates will be joining the country’s labor force this summer, a lawmaker whose party-list group has advocated education revealed yesterday.
Rep. Salvador Belaro Jr. of party-list 1-Ang Edukasyon said both the Department of Education (DepEd) and Commission on Higher Education (CHED) should make available job openings for these fresh graduates in order for them not to be included among the unemployed.
“The DepEd and CHED should make the school-to-work and school-to-entrepreneurship transition easier for the graduates by having job fairs in every senior high school and college as well as having the graduates’ job application portal fully operational,” Belaro said.
Belaro, who also sits as vice chairman of the House committee on higher and technical education and a member of the House basic education and culture, suggested it would be better if these graduates’ resumés can be sent to job portals of employers.
“Two of the last things students should accomplish before graduation are their resumé and application cover letter. These should then be uploaded to the jobs application portal, where prospective employers can choose the graduates to invite for job screening,” he said.
The assistant minority leader, who authored House Bill 1442 (Job Fair Act), said the portal should also be a one-stop online shop for signing up with the Social Security System, PhilHealth and Bureau of Internal Revenue.
The same thing should also be true with the clearances they need from both the National Bureau of Investigation and Philippine National Police, the concept of which should be similar to the Ease of Doing Business portal of the Department of Trade and Industry.
Meanwhile, an economist-lawmaker member of the House of Representatives is bullish about the bright prospects of the local economy this year, predicting that remittances from about 10 million overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) may reach a record high of $34 billion.
“I’m optimistic because in the first two months of this year, OFWs sent their dependents $5.3 billion. Last year, the monthly average was $2.68 billion and grand total was $32.23 billion,” Rep. Mikee Romero of party-list 1Pacman said.
“So, I think $34 billion is achievable this year,” the administration lawmaker revealed, citing latest data culled from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas which has a record of the number of OFWs and the amount that has been sent to their families here back home.
“The OFWs will keep sending more earnings to their dependents and many set aside their savings for buying that house and lot of their dreams. I expect the housing sector to keep gaining from OFW earnings,” Romero added.
Romero is one of the principal authors of the law creating the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development.
He also acknowledged that while dollars from the Middle East are falling by an average of 15 percent on an annual basis, “rising remittances from seafarers and from land-based OFWs in North America and parts of Europe and Asia make up for the Middle East decline.”
“We should be treating OFWs even better than how we welcome foreign tourists and investors on the basis alone of their contribution to the national economy,” Romero said, noting that $34 billion is equivalent to P1.77 trillion based on a $1-P52 exchange rate.
Romero said the universal health care law and the free college education in SUCs will have “minimal effect on OFW cash transfers because many OFW families tend to go to private hospitals and schools because of their improved economic status.”
---
Editor's note: An initial version of this story misstated the number of graduates as 13.5 million instead of 1.35 million.