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Thursday, January 19, 2006
Skilled, qualified labor needed by investors
By Aurelia l. Castro
Sun.Star Staff Reporter
The availability of skilled and qualified human resources remains a “critical factor” before investors put up businesses in Cebu.
That’s what Bonifacio Belen, executive director of the Cebu Educational Development Foundation for Information Technology
(Cedfit), said in an interview yesterday.
“We have to rebuild investors’ confidence. Our challenge now is to prove that we have quality graduates, skilled manpower and continuing support and trainings that would continue to equip our human resource,” he said.
The National Government said last week that it is expecting a larger share of the global outsourcing electronic services for customer care, medical transcription, animation, engineering design and other outsourced business processing services while industry players forecasted five-fold sales growth from outsourcing by 2010.
On the other hand, Jose Mari Bigornia, chairman of the industry-academe linkage committee of the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said Cebu can take advantage of the booming business process outsourcing (BPO) industry in the country.
“We have enough infrastructure and manpower to support investors. That is why investors are coming in and are eyeing the Philippines and even Cebu for possible business expansions or the establishment of new companies here in the city,” he told Sun.Star Cebu in a separate interview.
Huge demand
Belen, however, stressed that while Cebu has “enough” manpower, they need to be trained to be equipped with the knowledge and skills that are needed by BPO companies.
“With the huge demand for IT workers, we really need to fast track our efforts of developing our human resource. We aim to train 4,000 trainors or teachers from different universities in Cebu this year,” he said.
Local accountants, for example, can qualify for outsourced accounting jobs.
However, they need to know latest trends and computer applications being used by international companies or clients.
Bigornia also said that there are now companies starting to engage in home-based outsourcing for jobs, like telemarketing and surveys, among others.
“It’s the next generation thing. This could mean more job generation and could also prevent people from going abroad,” he said.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (January 19, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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