Cebu City, Cebu – the Cebu Educational Development Foundation for Information and Technology (Cedf-it), a consortium of industry, academe, government and non-government organizations, have committed P5-million to help fund training programs for some 1,000 “near-hires” prospects of business process outsourcing (BPO) and information technology (IT) employees in Cebu.
Among the BPO firms to benefit from said fund are Cedf-it members including Aegis People Support, Qualfone, Covergys, and Stream Global.
“This is a big opportunity for the industry and for Cedf-it, considering that we are moving towards sustaining and honing the local work pool for Cebu’s IT-BPO industry,” Cedf-it Executive Director Jun Saa said.
Saa said the “near-hire” training program improve the industry’s hiring rate by 30 to 70 percent.
“The program is expected to bridge the gap in workforce requirement of It-BPO companies here,” he told reporters in an interview.
Saa bared the P5 million worth of scholarship was approved recently by the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), and I pat of the P500-million stimulus fund committed by the Aquino government to facilitate “near-hire” training programs.
Last week, TESDA and the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP) signed a memorandum of agreement on the P500-million expansion of the IT-BPO Industry-based Training for Work Scholarship Program (I-TWSP) for 65,000 “near-hires” nationwide.
Near hires are applicants who have applied for jobs in the IT-BPO sector but have fallen short of requirements, and thus requiring additional training to meet industry standards.
It has been reported that the bulk – P400-million – of the fund will be set aside to train near hires while the best remaining P100 million has been set aside for the training of trainers and students, “who need longer training to be qualified employees in the IT-BPO sector.”

Source: Manila Bulletin - October 30, 2011