JOB HUNTERS | Applicants seeking employment troop to a mall in Manila where a job fair organized by the Department of Labor and Employment was being held as the economy slowly reopens. (MARIANNE BERMUDEZ / Philippine Daily Inquirer)
MANILA, Philippines — Labor Secretary Bienvenido Laguesma has questioned the usefulness of holding job fairs since relatively few applicants are hired for the thousands of job vacancies promised.
He talked of reviewing the job fairs and the jobs search website, Philjobnet, run by the Department of Labor and Employment (Dole) as part of his plan to streamline employment requirements.
“In fact, I want to review the impact of job fairs,” he said in a news conference during the turnover ceremonies with former Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III on July 1.
“We announce 100,000, 2,000 or 10,000 [available] jobs in a job fair, which will last for one or two days. Only 10 or 20 people are immediately hired. We should increase those numbers. I don’t know if that’s due to [jobs-skills] mismatch or something else,” Laguesma said.
He said he would find out from organizers of job fairs whether the announced job vacancies “are just promises and there are no actual or backup jobs.”
Review Philjobnet website
Laguesma said he would also order a review of the Philjobnet website to check whether it is accessible to most job applicants and whether the listed job vacancies had listed their requirements for easier application.
The latest job fair sponsored by the Dole was held on June 12 in various venues.
The Dole said 151,000 local and overseas employment opportunities were available, but out of over 28,600 jobseekers, only 2,405 applicants were hired on the spot.
A career labor official since 1976, Laguesma served as labor secretary during the Estrada administration.
Operational guidelines
For his second term as labor chief, Laguesma said he wanted the department to attend to underserved workers, especially those in the rural areas.
Laguesma also said he and Migrant Workers Secretary Susan Ople will issue a joint advisory next week for the operational guidelines between the two departments.
“By next week we will finalize the joint advisory to clarify and give guidance to affected OFWs (overseas Filipino workers) who require services from the [Dole] that should be addressed by the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW),” he said.
The DMW will only become operational next year.
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