Pice: Government, contractors must coordinate to meet skilled workers gap

THE Philippine Institute of Civil Engineers (Pice) Davao Region believes that a close coordination of the concerned government agencies with contractors will help lessen the shortage of skilled construction workers.

In an interview with Pice Davao Board of Directors Engr. Eddie Fuentes, he said there is an estimated increase of about 25 to 35 percent in the demand of construction-related jobs in Davao Region following the “Build, Build, Build” program of the Duterte administration.

In support of this statement are the data provided by the Department of Labor and Employment (Dole)-Davao which states that construction jobs are the most in-demand jobs in the region for the year. There are at least 1,205 vacancies for mason, 598 vacancies for carpenters, 402 vacancies for tile setters, 144 vacancies for rebarman, and 70 vacancies for foremen.

Fuentes emphasized that this sudden shortage is primarily brought about by the different infrastructure projects of the government together with different infrastructure developments of the private sector.

In order to address this concern, Fuentes suggested that the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda) should work hand-in-hand with organizations such as Pice.

“We are suggesting that we would be made partners by Tesda. They can certify us as the ones who can train construction workers and heavy equipment drivers. We can do lectures on construction procedures because that’s part of the industry concerns as well. Because right now, those that are certified or capable of training heavy equipment drivers are already going abroad,” said Fuentes.

He added they have their own training centers in their respective contractors firm. If only Tesda would be able to accredit these individual training centers, then training and certification of skilled workers will be easier.

In December of last year, Tesda Davao Regional Director Gaspar Gayona said there is an increasing demand for trainers of heavy equipment operators as the existing operators in the city were just trained by trainers from Manila and Cebu.

“We are encouraging those companies and contractors who already have equipment to register the program so that they have to do it here. After all, their operators will be the ones to benefit from this. We have a shortage because even the operators are going abroad,” said Gayona in an earlier interview.

It was April 2 of this year that a construction summit was held at Gran Men Seng and was attended by contractors and people from the academe in Mindanao. According to Fuentes, it was through this summit that they were able to come up with potential solutions to the existing skilled construction workers dilemma.