“I’d like to live as a poor man with lots of money.” – PATRICK SWAYZE.
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College education – achieving a four-year university degree – is a mindset imbedded in our national consciousness.
A Pinoy who does not have a college diploma is often (mistakenly) treated as “uneducated” or lacking the appropriate academic degree to earn the title of a professional.
Elsewhere around the world – even in the progressuive Western countries in Europe and the continental United States, a four year college diploma is not imperatively necessary for a person to get a job or earn a living.
Our country is the only one we know where employers – whether in the government or private sector – are
very particular about acacemic education.
They even lean towards schools that belong to the elite circle.
Today, as our country has evolved into its own (although not necessarily economically more progressive than before), government must respond to the growing educational chasm.
Even as schools and universities are turning out thousands of graduates annually, many cannot find work because the white collar jobs they want are comparatively inadequate to accommodate every college graduate.
It is in this aspect that the TESDA (Technical Education and Skills Development Authority).should come in. By its name alone, the development of technical skills is its principal mandate which is to provide the country’s workforce a platform to learn and pick up vocational skills that will help them find employment here and even abroad.
Majority of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) who have successfully found jobs abroad earn lucrative income and wage.
Because the OFW is conversant – if not fluent – in English, foreign employers desire them better than other foreign workers who are difficult to communicate with.
So many more job-seekers are eager to find an assignment abroad. Most of them are desperate because here it is difficult to provide food on the table three times a day.
Deplorable as it may seem. since this is the situation facing us all today, it becomes incumbent upon TESDA to flex its muscles and ensure that every idle person is afforded the opporunity to get a TESDA scholrship and education.
Decades ago, I met a young Filipino who migrated to the States in LA sometime in the eighties.. He had no academic degree. He just knew how to repair cars.
He started a car repair shop using the family’s garage. He did not have initially a business permit.
As his clients grew in numbers, neighbors called the police about the repair shop that was causing obstruction in the area.
He was forced to scout a vacant lot and found one.
When i went there to have my car fixed, I saw flashy foreign cars lined up for servicing.
As Pinoys are won’t doing, having coffee can reveal one good story.
He has been able to purchase the lot he was leasing and bought another adjacent property. With a house and lot, he has married a beautiful American girl with Indian descent and started a family.
A success story, it is.
In America, employment is not a guarantee to make you rich. Yes, it will tide you over from day to day, week after week, month after month. But definitely you won’t get rich that way.
Having a business of your own – however small – can do wonders.
It is in this light that TESDA should look at life in the Philippine setting.
If only all school drop-outs are given opportunities to get a vocational education and develop technical skills, no Filiino family will go hungry.
As the construction boom continues, the need for carpenters, masons, welders, electricians, etc. increases.
TESDA is a specific government agency that answers and responds to the specific needs of our time.
I wonder why nobody among our geniuses in Congres has never thought of taking the cudgels to elevate TESDA into a line department.
In the same manner that the DMW (Department of Migrant Workers) was finally elevated to
its present status, TESDA has a great huge role to play in the socio-economic life of Pinoys.
Not everyone is obssessed to work abroad but that everyone desires to have a job, earn a living and feed his family. (Email feedback to fredlumba@yahoo.com). GOD BLESS THE PHILIPPINES!.
