Tesda to upskill workers for foreign investments

TAKING a cue from the recent pronouncement of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. that the local workforce is the country’s greatest asset, the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda) said it is now focusing its efforts to upskill and re-skill workers to pave the way for more employment opportunities.

This direction comes as the government follows up with the investment pledges of foreign businesses during the Chief Executive’s recent participation in the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“Through our National Technical Education Skills Development Plan, this is one of the bases for the courses being developed by Tesda under our enterprise demand-driven program,” Tesda Deputy Director General Aniceto Bertiz 2nd said in a televised briefing.

Bertiz noted that the agency has partnered with different industries to ensure that the skills of the workers match with the qualifications needed for the available positions.

Tesda is also in a series of collaborations with other countries in the Middle East as well as Hungary, South Korea, Japan and fellow member states in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) for the “mutual recognition of training and certification,” he said.

“We are adopting the best practices of those countries so that we are ready once the foreign investors come in,” said Bertiz.

Tesda is also preparing to be an attached agency of the Department of Labor and Employment to address job skills mismatch.

“We have 16 regional offices and 82 provincial offices plus 4,700 Tesda-run schools, both private and public, gearing up for the entry of investments in the country,” he said.

“We are also coordinating with different stakeholders and industries for the further development of courses being offered by Tesda,” he added.