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By Katrina C. Guevarra, Special to The Manila Times
VENUS International Placement Agency, Inc. is
the only recruitment agency in the country that helped establish an
aviation training school known as the Philippine International
School of Aviation Sciences (PISAS).
These two entities remain distinct from each
other, though. Venus operates as a regular recruitment agency, while
the one-year old PISAS was established to help meet the increasing
demand for highly-skilled aviation workers overseas.
“There is a high demand overseas for aviation
workers, and we keep getting job orders that we cannot fill up
immediately since we have few skilled workers qualified to man these
available posts,” said Sylvia Pacina, president of Venus as she
underscores the need to train whoever will be deployed abroad as few
applicants meet the skills requirements needed for the trade.
She stressed, “There is shortage of aircraft
laborers, not because we lack the manpower, but we lack highly
trained and skilled persons for the available jobs.”
Since 1998, Venus has been registered as a
licensed land-based recruitment agency. By 2002, it ventured into
recruiting aviation workers with the appointment of its new
officials and the renewal of its Philippine Overseas Employment
Agency license. It has since made a name for itself in the
outsourcing of aviation manpower in terms of service competence and
volume deployment, but also for the school it helped set up to train
the people it deploys.
Though the two companies are separate entities,
Venus usually refers the applicants to PISAS for training before
they are deployed abroad.
“We are also concerned with the welfare of our
applicants. We see to it that we monitor their status during and
upon their arrival. When it comes to the clients abroad, I see to it
that our agency doesn’t accept clients/job orders for those asking
for brokerage fees. This is to assure the safety of our
applicants,” said Pacina.
None of the workers Venus deployed had been
abused in their respective worksites.
“Fortunately, we don’t have any recorded
incidents of abuse as of those we have deployed. In fact, it is
often the other way around that the clients or their bosses are the
ones running after them. That’s how competent and well-trained
they are before we send them abroad,” said Pacina.
Their good training made them deserving of
better pay packages. A skilled aviation worker could fetch a hefty
salary of as high as $5,000 in the United States, on top of good
non-cash benefits.
As of the moment, Venus’s sister entity PISAS
offers only two year-courses on Aircraft Management, Aircraft Sheet
Metal Technician, Aviation Composite Technology and other
short-training classes such as Basic Aircraft Trade Test—very
essential for one to be deployed—and the Advance Aircraft
Familiarization Training and Seminar.
PISAS also gives hope to the less-fortunate by
granting them equal opportunities to education by offering
affordable tuition fees and even scholarships grants (to the
deserving students) without compromising its quality of education.
With expensive books, a few expatriate
instructors, an enrollee has to pay a rather hefty P150,000 for a
six-month course. He does not need to produce the amount within this
period as he can pay it with his earnings as soon as he gets
deployed abroad.
Pacina has made it her own commitment to help
the students. She herself has ten scholars among the school’s
enrollees.
Venus International Placement Agency Inc. used
to have only Singapore as its market, but it now boasts of a wide
clientele from different parts of the globe such as Singapore,
Malaysia, Brunei, Middle East, United Kingdom and US, particularly
in Mobile, Alabama and San Antonio, Texas.
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