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BY HERBERT VEGO
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TESDA offers hope to pushers and users
THERE’S a way for shabu-infested barangays to reverse their image as sanctuaries of drug pushers and users. With this in mind, Secretary Guiling “Gene” Mamondiong – the new director general of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) – flew into Iloilo City yesterday to launch the Barangay Kasanayan para sa Kaunlaran at Kapayapaan (BKKK) at the city-owned Diamond Jubilee Hall on Mabini St.
Mamondiong, the first Muslim cabinet member of President Rodrigo Duterte, firmly believes that given a decent livelihood, drug pushers and users could be swayed back to the right side of the law with a little help from barangay officials. Lack of livelihood opportunities has no doubt become the usual excuse for residents to go wayward.
While we were going to press yesterday afternoon, we saw the city’s barangay officials trekking to the launching venue. Mayor Jed Mabilog was expected to deliver the welcome address.
In a sense, by involving themselves with the BKKK, certain barangay officials would likewise find a way to atone for their own misdeeds. It is no secret that some of them have partnered with drug lords in spreading the illegal drug menace.
In a powwow with this writer, TESDA Regional Director Toni June Tamayo revealed that the new program is actually open to everybody in the barangays, especially the unemployed and underemployed.
“We want to empower the capable but idle men and women in the barangays nationwide,” Tamayo said. “Trained for the right skills, they could fill the demand needed by industries and manufacturers; or even be self-employed.”
TESDA is the only government agency tasked to conduct vocational and technical skills trainings nationwide. It is aimed at equipping fit-to-work Filipinos with better chances of landing decent employment; as well as at eradicating structural unemployment, or the labor-supply mismatch that involves large numbers of students who complete college but don’t find jobs commensurate to, or appropriate for, their educational attainment because they do not have the skills that industries now primarily require as job qualifications.
The Barangay Kasanayan para sa Kaunlaran at Kapayapaan (BKKK) is targeted to cover all 42,000 barangays all over the country, counting on barangay officials to initiate “barangay mapping.” This means they would personally integrate with prospective beneficiaries and determine how they could fit into the technical-vocational trainings available. They would scout for livelihood competencies ideal for jobless or underemployed residents of each barangay regardless of age, as long as they are fit to work.
TESDA would then be in position to pinpoint the skills requirements of the barangay people, initiate and implement anti-poverty programs and projects particularly in the poorest regions; and also integrate the moral values, peace and order and such other modules as would support the advocacy of the President against illegal drugs.
The qualified applicants would enjoy theoretical and hands-on training by competent TESDA instructors for free and would even be provided with “take home” tool kits. Welding trainees, for instance, will be given with welding rods and shields; carpenters, with basic carpentry tools worth around P3,000. The global boom in the construction industry, incidentally, has created preferential demand for TESDA-trained carpenters, masons and welders.
Those who prefer self-employment may train to be an organic farmer, a manicurist, a masseur or a hilot.
The new TESDA leadership does not discriminate against conventional education drop-outs. It embraces the new paradigm that recognizes human talent outside the school; that it is not in short supply, and demand can be made inexhaustible. The limitations are only in how we recognize, address and develop it./PN
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