(L-R) Ms. Cynthia Llanes, Vice President for
Academic Affairs, Technological Institute of the Philippines; Mr. Angelo Q.
Lahoz, Senior Vice President, Technological Institute of the Philippines; Ms.
Ma. Corazon Halili-Dichosa, Executive Director, Board of Investments; Mr.
Masashi Takano, Team Leader, DTI-BOI-JICA Project; Mr. Philip A. Gioca, Country
Manager, JobStreet.com Philippines, Inc and Monica Palomares, Marketing
Specialist, JobStreet.com. Philippines, Inc.
Representatives from each partner organization sign a memorandum of
agreement recently at the Department of Trade and Industry Head Office in
Makati.
The automotive industry in the Philippines is experiencing
a dramatic boom. 10 years ago, 100,000 cars were produced over the course of a
year. Now, 400,000 are being manufactured annually. With projections showing
that car sales will achieve 1 million between 2025 and 2028, companies across
the entire automotive supply chain are stepping up their efforts to recruit
more employees in response to increased demand.
One concern faced by the industry has to do with the human
resources involved – there is a weak linkage between universities, whose fresh
graduates will represent a large part of the new workforce, and the
manufacturing and assembly segments of the automotive industry. Both students
and university staff demonstrate limited knowledge of the companies and
processes involved in automotive production, while most OJT programs for
students are typically found in the servicing sector, far removed from assembly
and manufacturing.
To address this concern, JobStreet.com Philippines has
partnered up with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Board of
Investments (BOI) with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), and
the Technological Institute of the Philippines (TIP), to help strengthen the
ties between the academe and the automotive industry.
Recently, the parties involved signed a memorandum of
agreement that underscored their commitment to the creation of the Philippine
Auto Industry-Academia Linkage Congress (PAAL Congress), an event that will be
attended by students and faculty from dozens of universities, officials from
TESDA training centers with automotive courses, and engineers and executives
from automotive companies. The goal of the PAAL
Congress is to bolster the connection between the
automotive industry and the academe, catering especially to engineering
graduates who may be future members of this workforce. It will be held on
September 28, 2018, at the TIP -Quezon City Campus.
Mr. Philip Gioca, Country Manager of JobStreet Philippines,
said that JobStreet’s main contribution will be connecting the best of the best
graduates from different universities, including TIP, to the bigger value chain
that supplies the entire automotive industry.
“Where we’ve previously focused on providing quality
solutions for jobseekers across the entire market, this partnership gives us
the opportunity to focus on a single industry and understand a value chain that
we might not necessarily be aware of. This partnership represents an important
learning experience for us, determining what kind of talents these automotive
companies are looking for, and through what we learn, we’ll be able to match
our millions of jobseekers with the needs of the more than 100 companies in the
supply chain,” Mr. Gioca said.
The project predicts that the 2028 expected increase of
annual car production will lead to an increase in direct employment in the
automotive industry by between 700,000 and 1,170,000 jobs. In addition to this,
there will be a significant increase in indirect employment, creating many new
jobs in sectors such as manufacturing of the materials required to produce
cars, automotive sales and maintenance, transport and storage, and petroleum
stations, JobStreet’s participation in this project validates their vision of
providing Filipinos with jobs. Through this and other partnerships with the
government and the academe, JobStreet aims to refine its understanding of each
industry, and create opportunities to connect even more jobseekers with their
future careers.
University officials and students, in turn, are called to
participate in the Congress, which will expose students to new careers and give
a glimpse of a possibly hitherto unexplored industry.
The Congress is a component of a 2-year pilot project
between JICA and DTI, known as the “Elaboration of Industrial Promotion Plans
using Value Chain Analysis,” which started in late 2016 and aims to bolster the
DTI’s efforts to promote the automotive industry through development of
concrete policy directions and elaboration plans.
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