Hard work pays off for high school grad

It’s not a matter of chance, but a choice for 43-year-old Roque Destacamento who rose from laborer to company manager.

Coming from a poor family,  his dream of becoming an engineer was never realized when his father, a fisherman, could no longer send him and his  siblings to college.

Destacamento left his hometown of Medellin in north Cebu and worked for a bottling company as a forklift operator. After his contract, he worked as a construction laborer.

Years later, his third employer, Phoenix Building System Corp., which then specialized in water proofing and concrete finishing, decided to offer  plumbing services.

“At that time, I didn’t have any background in plumbing. Since one of our construction sites was near TESDA, I decided to sneak out of work  and walked in to ask if they  offered  a vocational course for plumbing,” Destacamento said in Cebuano.

In 2006, he tagged along two co-workers  to enroll in  in a plumbing course in the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda) without the knowledge of their boss.

Destacamento trained for 100 hours in  plumbing.

“I worked in the morning, ran to  TESDA in the evening. We had night classes and whole-day classes on Saturdays,” he recalled.

After learning that the training would take a month, he asked his boss permission to go on  leave from work on Saturdays so he could attend  class.

Instead of being  reprimanded, his boss, Edgar Watin, president of the company, told him that he and the two other workers could  go to class on Saturdays with pay. He also refunded them their  tuition.

After completing the course, Destacamento was issued a certificate of competency (COC) for plumbing.  He  became a salesman for pipes in their company and later a technical officer for plumbing.

“It was in Tesda that I learned about how real plumbing works. I learned how to properly install our product so I became a better salesman,” Destacamento said.

Watin, a civil engineer, said he saw the eagerness to learn in Destacamento. “At that time we really wanted to start  plumbing services but we were not technically knowledgeable.  When I heard (Destacamento) went to TESDA, I encouraged my other staff to enroll and so did I,” Watin said.

Now their firm has grown and opened several offices in different regions. When  they started their office in Bohol in 2008, two years  after Destacamento got his competency skills in Tesda, he was made the branch manager.

“TESDA  helped me a lot. I may not have a college degree but who would have thought I would reach this level,” he said.

As  a branch manager, Destacamento is part-owner of the company.

From a simple house in Medellin, Destacamento has acquired several properties and other businesses. He was also able to send his three children to school. His eldest child is studying engineering in a private school in Bohol.

When he left Medellin in his younger years, he took a  four-hour bus ride to Cebu City to try his luck. When he returned, he was driving his own vehicle. He was also elected a barangay official in his hometown.

“I was only guided by my life’s priorities –  be truthful,  work hard  and keep your self-respect. TESDA was an instrument to open many  opportunities for me,” he said. Aside from plumbing,  TESDA offers vocational  courses in  automotive, hotel and restaurant management-related courses, bookkeeping, food safety handling, electrical installation, masonry and carpentry, welding, among others.