By Sarwell Meniano/Philippine News Agency
TACLOBAN CITY — At least 270 out of 1,144 applicants were hired on the spot during the Labor Day job fair in this city Wednesday, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) said.
Some 439 workers were nearly hired while 1,043 applicants were found to be qualified. The total number of applicants is only about 16 percent of the 7,000 jobs offered to workers.
DOLE Eastern Visayas Regional Director Yahya Centi urged those who were unqualified to undergo skills training and explore business opportunities.
“Take this opportunity to acquire new skills and prepare for future job fairs. The government is ready to help them hone their skills and assist them if they want to open a business,” Centi said in a phone interview on Thursday.
The labor department noted that many of those who came to the jobs fair are new graduates while some are underpaid employees.
One of the qualified applicants is Exzar Barayoga, 42, of Del Pilar village in Basey, Samar who is seeking employment in one of the farms in New Zealand. The economic difficulties faced by their family after Super Typhoon Yolanda struck in 2013 prompted him to try his luck abroad once more.
“I want to work abroad to raise enough capital to start a farming business in my hometown. It’s hard to earn money here, especially that everything is expensive here,” Barayoga told reporters.
The father of two worked as a farmer in Japan from 2005 to 2011 as an undocumented alien. He earned PHP150,000 monthly from modern rice farming abroad.
The region, composed of the provinces of Leyte, Samar, Biliran, Southern Leyte, Eastern Samar, and Northern Samar, has a workforce of about 2 million. Its employment rate stands at 95.8 percent in 2018.
Although the jobless rate is low at only 4.2 percent, the underemployment rate remains high at 21.4 percent, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
The PSA defines underemployed as “employed persons who express the desire to have additional hours of work in their present job, or to have additional job, or to have a new job with longer working hours.”
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