Press Release
May 1, 2008

KIKO ON LABOR DAY: LOOK INTO LABOR MISMATCH TO ADDRESS LACK OF EMPLOYMENT AND JOB SECURITY

Senate Majority Leader and Independent senator Kiko Pangilinan on Labor Day urged government to look into the country's labor mismatch to mitigate the seeming lack of employment and job security facing millions of Filipinos.

"While 1.1M of our 2.6M unemployed are college graduates, we have 650,000 technical-vocational jobs available. Imagine all these opportunities going to waste because our workers do not have the right training for the right jobs! Our labor force is compelled to enter into jobs that do not offer security when they can very well be prepared for dependable employment, if only we have the correct priorities," Kiko said.

"We often address labor problems from a simplistic perspective: there is unemployment, therefore we need more jobs. This is of course logical, and we truly need to generate more jobs, but in order to keep up with the ever-growing labor challenges, we need to think out of the box and explore new ways of addressing the issue. Besides providing jobs, we need to maximize the prospects that are already here for us," Kiko added.

"We need to review our education policies and priorities thoroughly. The recent National Career Assessment Exam (NCAE) results showed that more than 50 percent of our 1.3M high school senior students have shown higher aptitude on technical-vocational skills than scholastic aptitude. This indicates the mismatch of our education priorities and the career opportunities we have. We should likewise explore other alternative solutions such as including more entrepreneurial skills in our basic and secondary curriculum programs. We must also exert a concerted effort to change the rather unfavorable view on tech-voc jobs," Kiko ended.

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