Right values are key to employment

MANILA, Philippines—As 121 young men and women sat quietly and listened intently, Oscar M. Lopez, chairman emeritus and trustee of the Keitech Educational Foundation, Inc. (Kefi), extolled the merits of the old-fashioned value of honesty.

“Honesty will bring you more rewards,” he told his audience that also included government officials, parents and private sector representatives. “Honesty remains relevant no matter what others say.”

Lopez’s statement had a special resonance at a time when the whole nation was almost stunned with disbelief at how the country’s highest military officers and their families casually accepted and spent millions of pesos, dollars even, while there was no money to buy foot soldiers proper uniforms and combat boots.

Addressing the new graduates of the Kananga-EDC Institute of Technology (Keitech), Lopez stressed that, while the school sought to provide students with skills that would enhance their chances of finding employment, it was the complementary and equally intensive focus on values that would give them the edge over similarly trained competitors in the job market.

He said, “An employer is most likely to prefer an honest, courteous, disciplined worker over someone with the same skills,” he said.

Keitech teaches values in and outside the classroom, integrating lessons in teamwork, respect and discipline in group activities or individual projects; cleanliness and honesty in dormitory living.

Sports activities, like the Keitech Olympics, and school clubs are also used to teach values.

The 121 young men and women composed the second group of graduates of Keitech, a technical-vocational school that is a partnership between the Energy Development Corporation (EDC) and its host municipality, Kananga, in Leyte. EDC operates in the town a huge geothermal plant that supplies energy to parts of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.

The three-hectare Keitech stands on an old airstrip that straddles barangays Rizal and Hiluctugan.

Paul Aquino, Kefi president/trustee, said in an interview after the graduation ceremonies that the institute was part of EDC’s education advocacy under its corporate social responsibility program. The energy giant earlier launched the School for Excellence Program, of which a regular school feeding project to motivate pupils to attend classes was the cornerstone.

<strong>Employable skills</strong>

Keitech became a natural offshoot of the program as Aquino said only one percent of high school graduates in Kananga went to college. The unemployment rate was estimated to be 15 percent, double the national rate of 7.3 in 2010.

The concern, as indicated in the speech of Leyte Governor Carlos Jericho L. Petilla during the rites, was shared by the local government. Petilla said “majority of jobs do not need degrees, but education—not necessarily college.”

He said only some 30 percent of high-school graduates had to finish college and fill available positions. What was needed was to train high-school graduates in vocational-technical courses and “make them more employable than college graduates.”

The governor said graduates of Keitech were proving to be more employable than those with college degrees.

With their views and objectives dovetailing, EDC and the local government each put up P130 million to establish the facility that offers completely free training, including accommodation. All students live on campus on school days.

Aquino said each student of the facility, which can accommodate a maximum of 150 students, cost the sponsors P120,000. The host municipality of Kananga gets 75 percent of slots while quotas are set for the other EDC facilities.

Programs, each lasting for a period of 10.3 months, are grouped into construction, metals and engineering, and tourism, all in accordance with standards and requirements set by the Technical Skills and Development Authority (Tesda). Next year, the school will introduce pipe-fitting training.

A Keitech brochure says, “The training curriculum is tailored to current work opportunities based on what is ‘in demand’ in the job market.”

“Students are first trained to acquire basic and common competencies—such as basic English and mathematics, occupational health and safety procedures, and uses of tools and equipment—before they undergo specialized technical skills training,” it adds.

Aquino said that while all other programs are open to women, they are discouraged from going into carpentry because of the current setup in the construction industry where crews usually share quarters in temporary work camps.

Experience from the first set of graduates also taught the Keitech administrators a valuable lesson—to ensure that students will be 18 years old, the legal age for employment in the Philippines, by the time they graduate.

Although the two sets of graduates registered 100 passing rates in the Tesda accreditation tests, employment had not been 100 percent for the first group partly for this reason and partly because several decided to do more schooling, probably encouraged by Lopez’s advice: “Keep learning because the world keeps changing.”

Lopez, who donated the multipurpose hall named after him where the graduation rites were held, also told Keitech graduates, “Life is not a race but a marathon. Do not be discouraged by the success of others but celebrate it and work on your own success.”

Many of the graduates had been employed by EDC itself in Kananga and its other plants. With the help of Keitech’s Job Placement Office, majority of the first group of graduates have found employment in and outside Leyte. Prospects are equally bright for the new graduates.

Aquino said the reputation Keitech was building for itself was already generating a great deal of interest and drawing many applicants.

More than 250 are currently vying for the maximum 150 slots at Keitech in school year 2011-2012.

Aquino, who said Keitech sought to make its students appreciate the fact that “skilled labor is not something to look down on,” said the school also promoted the “pay-it-forward” philosophy, to go with the values formation efforts.

He said graduates who found gainful employment were encouraged to help new trainees through a sponsorship program called Adopt-a-Trainee. While the compact between school and graduate was based on word of honor rather than a formal contract, Lopez said some graduates had started giving back to their alma matter, sharing with Keitech part of their incomes for the education of new trainees.

The Kananga-EDC Institute of Technology is in barangays (villages) Hiluctugan and Rizal in Kananga, Leyte. Contact Emiliano V. Saceda II, administrator, tel. 0917-7247686, e-mail [email protected]. The Kananga-EDC Educational Foundation, Inc. is at Bldg. 5, Energy Development Corporation, Energy Center, Merritt Road, Fort Bonifacio, Taguig City;  tel. 8931320.