5,000 workers readied for single Asean market

To better prepare tourism manpower for the Asean Economic Community (AEC) 2015, at least 5,000 tourism industry workers will be trained and 500 tour professionals will be certified under the Asean Mutual Recognition Arrangement by 2016 in Cebu, Bohol, Palawan, and Davao.

This is part of the $7.1 million technical assistance project of the Department of Tourism (DOT), Asian Development Bank (ADB), and Canadian International Development Agency

(CIDA).

Assistant Tourism Secretary Rolando Canizal said the training of tourism workers and the certification of the tour professionals would address the skills mismatch in the industry, which was one of the issues identified during consultations with tourism stakeholders.

Canizal said the project would also address the low investments in training among employers.

He said addressing this issue would help make the country become more competitive when the AEC would be implemented in 2015 creating a single market for Asean member countries.

“These are just among the key issues that we have identified. The others included: the lack of good quality and consistent level of facilities and services; the need to benchmark the current standards for quality assurance with international norms and practices; and the absence and low service standards in existing system,” he said.

main outputs

The project will cover the main outputs including the regulatory impact assessment, the hotel and resort quality assurance and accreditation system, and the tourism industry skills development program.

“We will be creating a regional committee that will review and assess requirements of each area, the needs of the LGUs (local government units) and how these can be supported by the project,” he said.

Tourism Undersecretary Maria Victoria V. Jasmin said that she was convinced that the DOT didn’t make a mistake in choosing Cebu as one of the project’s pilot areas.

The other areas included in the international gateway clusters of the country are Bohol, Palawan, and Davao.

“These areas already have a large number of arrivals and a lot of tourism establishments which are already in place. That is why we have identified them for the pilot. Hopefully, these will be duplicated in other areas,” she said.

Jasmin said it would be important to address these manpower issues now to ensure that by 2016, when the Philippines will be better equipped to welcome 10 million foreign visitors and 56 million domestic travelers.

She said we would then have more globally competitive people working in different tourism-related establishments in the country.

Shigeko Hattori, director for financial sector, public management and trade division of the Asian Development Bank, said that she was pleased to see strong support from the local government in Cebu with Mayor Michael Rama attending the event yesterday.

“This is fully funded by the government of Canada as part of the Improving Competitiveness for Inclusive Growth program,” Hattori said.

Hattori said that tourism is an important sector in channeling decent jobs and promoting inclusive growth and with the Philippines’ current thrust on inclusive growth, the partnership will help the country in achieving this goal.

CIDA head counselor Luke Myer said that he believed there would still be a lot of potential that could be realized in the country’s tourism industry.

“The Philippines is richly endowed with natural resources and predominantly English speaking people which gives you a lot of advantages. Improving competitiveness will further put the Philippines on top. Natural resources with rightness of skill is very important for a destination or product to succeed,” Myer said.