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Would-be programmers who nearly passed their proficiency hiring
examinations have a second chance to land careers in software
development houses in the Philippines serving global markets as
offshore and outsourced e-services providers.
This second chance is due to the Philippine
government’s inclusion of software development short-term training
programs in its expanded program of scholarship vouchers for
near-hires who could finally land jobs in the country’s booming
offshore and outsourced e-services sector, should they apply once
more in the companies that had initially turned them down.
The program is the PGMA Training for Work
Scholarship Program of the Technical Education and Skills
Development Authority (Tesda). The 2008 package of P350 million in
scholarship vouchers is P290-million more than 2007’s P60 million.
In addition to programmer near-hires,
beneficiaries of this program of short-term retraining scholarships
are near-hire medical transcriptionists, animators, and call-center
agents.
Tesda Director General Augusto “Boboy”
Syjuco formally turned over the P350-million fund to the Business
Processing Association of the Philippines in simple ceremonies
recently at the Hotel InterContinental Manila in Makati City. BPAP
is the umbrella organization of trade and industry associations
involved in offshore and outsourced e-services.
Speaking at the ceremonies, Syjuco expressed
confidence the Philippine e-services sector would continue to grow
this year in spite the looming economic recession in the United
States. He pointed out that labor and training costs were only 15
percent that of the US.
“For us, with low labor costs and excellent
training institutions, there is nowhere to go for us but up,”
Syjuco said.
BPAP CEO Oscar Sanez, who also spoke at the
ceremonies, said the umbrella organization would apportion the fund
among its various trade and industry associations. These would then
distribute their fund allotments to member companies, which would
then award them to near-hires seen as finally deserving employment
with further “finishing school“training.
These near-hires could then use the vouchers to
pay for their tuition and other fees in any of the 450 Tesda-accredited
and privately-run training centers throughout the Philippines.
Sanez said the fund’s administration would be
transparent with reports on its distribution given out weekly. These
reports would always be publicly available and could be subject to
auditing at any time.
At the press briefing following the ceremonies,
personnel from the BPAP secretariat said vouchers for near-hire
software developers would be P30,000 each. There would be 1,500
vouchers set aside for them and would make up P45 million of the
PGMA TWSP-Tesda fund.
Beneficiaries could use the vouchers to enroll
in software development training programs the companies that nearly
hired them believe they need “finishing courses” in. Some
examples would be courses in C#, .Net, JAVA, and other platforms.
Vouchers for near-hires in medical transcription
and animation would be at P10,000 each while that for near-hire
agents in call centers would be P5,000 each.
It is expected that this training program would
generate this year employment of at least 40,000 more personnel in
the Philippine offshore and outsourced e-services sector.
-- Ike Suarez
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