CLARK FREEPORT -- This city’s Public Employment Services Office (Peso) has been named best in the region under the component city category during Friday’s search for the best employment service office.
In the highly urbanized city category, Angeles City won the same award.
In the City of San Fernando, the award comes after the city’s Peso, now a full blown division after Councilor Alex Patio passed an ordinance establishing it as a 12-personnel City Employment Services Division (CESD) from a single desk unit, was accorded the same recognition in 2008 by the Department of Labor and Employment’s Bureau of Labor and Employment (Dole-BLE).
Community Affairs Department head Donny Sayre was again named best Peso Manager in the same category.
Sayre told Sun.Star Pampanga that the back-to-back awards are testament to the continuing efforts of the CESD to provide employment and job placements to thousands of fresh graduates and the city’s unemployed.
“This is of course in accordance to the programs and thrusts of our Mayor Oscar Rodriguez and the City Council to generate investments for the city and provide for decent employment for the Fernandinos. We have gone out of our bounds and have been inviting to our job fairs even those from nearby towns so we can meet the growing demands of employers in the city,” Sayre said.
He noted that the CESD has been recognized for actively participating in the drive to lessen unemployment in the region.
“In 2009 alone, we were able to place some 17,603 job hunters in local companies at 9,072 and about 8,581 overseas, mostly in service oriented companies. Our key strategy is to respond to the needs and demands of the market, reach out to grassroots communities through the city’s Magsilbi Tamu program and accommodate those in the remotest barangays,” he said.
He said the City Government is now mulling for the creation of a Technical Vocational Institute for the poor but deserving students who do not make it to the city college.
“We want to accommodate them all and provide them employment as there is a rising need for technical and vocational expertise locally and abroad,” said Sayre.
Aside from the coveted trophy, the CESD was also given a computer set for its job placement used by the BLE.
Meanwhile, Angeles City Mayor Francis “Blueboy” Nepomuceno said the award serves as recognition of the many programs being implemented by the Peso here.
Nepomuceno said the Peso has been continuously organizing job fairs and job matching to put more residents of Angeles into the working class.
“Already, it has sent a significant number of applicants abroad last year and hundreds more as locally hired through its Peso employment program,” the mayor said, adding that it aims to book at least 1,000 local and foreign employment for Angeleños during the coming job fairs this year.
City Administrator Mark Allen Sison, for his part, lauded the efforts of Deocales, saying Nepomuceno has instructed the city organizers to hold a simple but fitting recognition program for the Peso in this city Monday.
“We are very proud of them and we hope that they do not sit on their laurels and continue to aspire for better performance this year,” Sison said.
The winners of the regional awards will also vie for the upcoming National Peso Awards to be scheduled by the Dole in the coming months. Winners are adjudged based on existing programs and achievements on organizing employment events and number of people employed in such events.
Also recognized during the awarding ceremonies were Angeles City Peso Manager Adelina Deocales who was named Best Manager and the provincial Peso headed by Luningning Vergara as Best Provincial Peso. (JTD and IOF)