DAGUPAN CITY, Philippines –With the Department of Education’s (DepEd) choice of this city as one of the five pilot areas in the country for its ‘Abot-Alam’ Program, the mayor is optimistic Dagupan is on its way to achieving zero out-of-school youth (OSY) by 2016.
Fernandez said during the ‘Abot-Alam’ Stakeholders Assembly and International Literacy Day celebration held at the CSI Stadia last Sept. 8 that this is very timely as the city government is set to expand Dagupan’s business district staring next year by establishing new growth centers in Bonuan Gueset, Caranglaan-Tebeng and Pantal-Lucao.
With the new growth centers, there will be a strong demand for employment with the coming in of investors and expansion of businesses, thus it is important for these out-of-school youth to acquire all the skills and training from ‘Abot-Alam’ in order to be job-ready next year.
“With the new growth centers, investors and new businesses will be coming to Dagupan by next year resulting to job opportunities for the Dagupeño out-of-school youth,” Fernandez said.
‘Abot-Alam’ is a program of the national government that envisions zero out-of-school youth in the country up to the year 2016 by providing them with free education via non-formal short courses, livelihood and vocational skills.
Meanwhile, Fernandez suggested to Dagupan DepEd Schools Superintendent Gloria Torres to convert some schools into evening classes to accommodate more OSYs and to allocate budget under the special education fund for the purpose of adding more teachers for the OSYs.
The mayor added that she will coordinate with the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority for it to bring to Dagupan their Mobile Training Program which aims to bring the agency’s technical-vocational skills training programs closer to the people by going around different communities.
Aside from Dagupan, the other pilot areas of the ‘Abot-Alam’ program are the cities of Tawi-Tawi, Zamboanga, Santiago and Iloilo.