DOLE lauds Cebu City for help on JobStart

CEBU, Philippines - The Department of Labor has commended the Cebu City government for committing to help expand the coverage of the agency’s newest full-cycle employment facilitation program, JobStart.

DOLE Secretary Rosalinda Dimapilis-Baldoz acknowledged the Cebu City government which committed to help in the rollout of JobStart in order to include other local government units and Public Employment Service Offices in the city and the province.

“This is, indeed, good news about JobStart. It means more Filipino youth Filipinos could benefit from the program,” Baldoz said, after she received a report from the Bureau of Local Employment, JobStart program implementer, on the successful employers’ forum and media launch of JobStart in Cebu City.

In her report, BLE Director Dominique Tutay said 58 of Cebu City’s biggest employers attended the employers’ forum where the BLE and its local government unit partner, Department of Manpower Development and Placement, outlined the specifics of the JobStart Philippines Program.

JobStart Philippines is a program under President Benigno Aquino III’s administration which hopes to address the job-skill matching and youth employment challenge in the country.

The first of its kind in Southeast Asia, JobStart borrows good practices in full-cycle employment facilitation service from Kenya, Chile, and the United Kingdom.

It was pilot-tested in four local government units in Luzon, with funding support from the government of Canada and technical assistance from the Asian Development Bank.

Given the positive feedback from both the employers and JobStart youth beneficiaries during the mid-term review, DOLE decided to scale up the program in the pilot areas and roll it in 10 additional LGUs covering Visayas and Mindanao, including Cebu City.

JobStart is a career coaching and skills training program intended to help young people jumpstart their careers by creating opportunities to improve their technical skills and develop the life skills necessary for success in today’s competitive workplace through partnerships with employers.

In a statement, Baldoz said the program’s full-cycle employment facilitation service is a systematic approach in assisting young jobseekers from planning their career paths all the way to acquiring the best-fit jobs.

Under JobStart, a parti-cipant is assessed for his or her job readiness and then provided with a 10-day intensive life skills training designed to holistically hone his or her attitude and behavioral skills and transform him or her into a person well-prepared to face the challenges of the world of work.

The labor secretary said that the completion of career guidance and life skills training enables the participant to be job-matched with a partner employer for the technical training of up to three months and application of learning through internship program for another three months in a workplace environment.

Baldoz said that with JobStart, the government hopes to make a dent in youth unemployment, which remains a pressing, continuing challenge, noting that almost half of the Philippines’ unemployed are young Filipinos aged 15 to 24 years old.

Baldoz further said that youth unemployment rate is still more than twice the national rate. One of the root causes of youth unemployment is reportedly the lack of relative experience and skills among young jobseekers, and JobStart seeks to address that problem.  (FREEMAN)