AT LEAST 287 youths in Mandaue City benefited from the Special Program for Employment of Students (Spes), a program initiated by the Public Employment Service Office (Peso) Mandaue and the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE)-Central Visayas.
Musoline V. Suliva, Peso manager, told SunStar Cebu on Monday, July 26, 2022, that these beneficiaries comprise out-of-school youths, children of displaced workers, children affected by calamities, and those with families having below P154,000 annual net income 15 to 30 years old.
Applicants would need to go to the Peso office and submit the necessary requirements, including a certificate of low income for those parents who are wage earners, a certificate of indigence (non-wage earners), and a photocopy of the report cards of their last school attended.
They will undergo screening and evaluation to see if they really qualify for the program, said Suliva.
Suliva said the program aims to provide temporary employment to these disadvantaged youths to augment their family's income to assure they would be able to pursue their education.
Under Spes, the indigent students chosen will undergo full-time work for eight hours in 20 days until they resume school.
They will be assigned clerical, encoding, messenger duties, computer and programming jobs, and customer service in the public and private sectors.
Beneficiaries will be given a salary following the prevailing minimum wage in the city, of which 40 percent will be shouldered by DOLE and 60 percent by their local government unit (LGU).
They will also be entitled to other government-mandated benefits such as one-year insurance from the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), among others.
Suliva also said there might be possibilities they will be absorbed by their employers after they have completed the program, though it is not an assurance.
The Spes program, initiated originally by DOLE a couple of years back, was re-started in Mandaue City in 2021, and about 200 indigent students benefited from it in 2021. (HIC)