Almost 8M Filipinos got jobs—DOLE

Job fairs, more vocational courses, career guidance and skills matching, among other services offered by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), have made it possible for close to 8 million Filipinos to find jobs over the past five years, Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz said.

“[W]e have placed 7.8 million jobseekers over the last five years through the frontline services of our Public Employment Service Offices (PESO),” Baldoz said.

The labor official said the DOLE had serviced 7,850,159 job seekers from 2010 up to the first semester of 2015, and had found jobs here and abroad for 77 percent of them, or 6,022,258 workers.

“This number [is bound to] increase as the DOLE still has 478,057 jobseekers targeted for placement in the rest of 2015,” Baldoz said in a statement.

Baldoz said the DOLE met its targets by working with 1,925 established PESOs, which are multi-employment service facilities that bolster the government’s policy of “providing full employment and equal employment opportunities for all” without charging fees. They offer such frontline services as job fairs, monitoring of the Special Program for Employment of Students, career guidance, employment coaching and job matching, she said.

Baldoz said the government had also deployed 200 additional job search kiosks in PESOs and DOLE regional and field offices nationwide.

“These job search kiosks use advanced green technology to extend services even in places where there is no, or limited, Internet connection,” she said.–Tina G. Santos