THE Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda) Davao Region is calling on to contractors and other private sectors in the construction industry to partner with them to train those who can teach on the operation of heavy equipment as the city is currently experiencing shortage of trainers of the equipment.
As a lot of establishments are being constructed in Davao City, Tesda Davao regional director Gaspar Gayona said there has also been an increasing demand for trainers of heavy equipment operators as the existing operators in the city were just being trained by trainers from Manila or Cebu. He said Davao City does not have its own set of trainers.
“We are encouraging those companies and contractors who already have equipment to register the program (in Tesda) 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,” Gayona said adding in the city there is no institutionalized program yet for heavy equipment training.
In the event that a partnership with the private sector and Tesda would be pushed through, he said they will help the companies develop a curriculum in order to address the needs of the industry. Gayona added that some of the heavy equipment operators that currently needs trainers are crane and excavator operators.
“We will import trainers from Manila and Cebu to train the trainers here in Davao because we really need that,” Gayona said.
Last year, a contractor was looking for heavy equipment workers and operators from Tesda Davao Region however, since they do not have an institutionalized curriculum or even trainers for the program, they could not provide operators as well. Because of this, Gayona started encouraging contractors to partner with them to train trainers to be based here in Davao. He said Tesda Davao Region will be willing to finance the scholarship for the trainers’ methodology.
“They will pay about P2,000 for the registration, we can even wave that. And then, assessment of which NC, that’s about P500. As for training, we’ll have regular scholarship. Trainer’s methodology is at about P10,000 per head. It’s practically a small thing. As for Tesda, we are very willing to facilitate,” he said.
With the demand of construction workers both here and abroad, Gayona added the only thing they can do is to continuously create the pool of workers to retain the availability.
“Even though we have remittances from our Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), if you do not have workers in your economy, you cannot just depend on the remittances. Even if you invest the remittances to construction, if you don’t have workers, nothing will happen,” said Gayona adding there should be a balance for local construction workers and those coming out of the country to work.