TACLOBAN CITY, May 4 (PNA) -– Only 265 job seekers were hired on the spot out of the nearly 2,000 registered applicants who took part the Labor Day job fair in this city, indicating that skills mismatch problem persists in this region, an official of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) said.
DOLE Regional Director Elias Cayanong said last week’s job fair result calls for more collaboration between the academe and employers to produce more graduates needed in the job market.
“There are many job opportunities without qualified workers. Most graduates have been looking for white-collar jobs, but in the real world, there are hundreds of skilled workers in a company and only 10 to 20 office workers,” Cayanong said.
The official observed that the situation is reversed in schools where majority of students take courses that would qualify them to earn work performed in an office or other administrative setting.
The Labor Day job fair has offered about 6,000 jobs, but only few have actually registered since job seekers are not qualified or not interested with the available job vacancies.
The labor department almost reached its 15 percent hired-on-the-spot (HOTS) target with the 14.36 percent HOTS rated recorded in the recent job fair.
Cayanong said the report confirms that labor mismatch continue to be a big concern in the region with employers having trouble looking for suitable workers.
For instance, at the Leyte Industrial Development Estate in Isabel town, there are many job openings and only few skilled workers are from Leyte.
On April 30, the DOLE also initiated a job fair in Ormoc City. Of the 877 registered applicants, only 133 were hired.
Three months ago, the DOLE and the city government here held a job fair with 1,210 job offerings. However, only 146 job seekers showed up and only two got hired within the day.
In 2014, the government led 18 job fairs in Eastern Visayas with 42,960 job vacancies. Registration was pegged at 11,604 and only 1,224 applicants landed jobs on the spot. (PNA)
LAP/SARWELL Q. MENIANO
