The City Council has approved an ordinance granting the authority of the city mayor to sign a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE XI) for the implementation of the Jobstart Philippines Flagship Program.
Approved on Tuesday, the ordinance will help out-of-school youths to be trained and be given a job so that they can earn.
Councilor Pamela Librado-Morata, committee chair on labor and employment opportunities, said that a MOA is necessary for the program to be implemented.
In partnership with the Public Employment Service Office (PESO) and the city government, DOLE XI has been implementing the program since 2016.
“This program has been helping out-of-school youths to land employment in partnership with locally-based companies and establishments,” she said.
Although she did not mention the amount, Librado-Morata said funding the program is from Canada.
The program aims to provide skills training to out-of-school youths and after the training, they will be given allowance, and employers will hire them based on the skills they are trained for.
“Basically, they will be given a job who matched what they have trained for,” she said.
She also said that most applicants came from the second and third districts of the city, and not much from the first district.
“As some youths have no jobs and are not going to school, we have decided to come up with the program which will help them have jobs and earn for a living,” she said.
Most companies that hired these youths after training are BPO (business process outsourcing) companies, she said.
The program provides 10 days of training for the initial phase, then they will proceed to the two to three months of training after finishing the first phase.
However, Morata said that if some individuals do not qualify for their job applications, they will be provided with certificates so that they can apply to other companies.
Interested applicants can approach the councilor’s office at the Sanggunian Panlungsod for inquiries. They will immediately be referred to DOLE for the application.
