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With Professional Regulation Commission at the lead, Baldoz announces first Professional Summit in October; DOLE welcomes bus operators’ SC petition for TRO on bus transport reforms and Baldoz hails career guidance integration into K to 12

Posted on July 13th By mjlc (Labor Communications),


It’s all systems go  for the holding of the country’s first Professionals Summit, to be held from 18 to 19 October 2012 at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) in Manila.

Labor and employment Secretary Rosalinda Dimapilis-Baldoz announced this yesterday after Professional Regulation Commission chairman Atty. Teresita R. Manzala reported that all the 46 professional boards of the PRC are gearing up to ensure the success of the summit, aimed at sustaining the country’s global standards in the professional development and education of its professionals.

“Although Chairman Manzala of the PRC has bared the holding of the country’s first Professionals Summit at the recent National Career Advocacy Congress, it is worthwhile reiterating the announcement to drum up interest and support for this important event,” said Secretary Baldoz.

She said the Professionals Summit’s objective is to “cascade the results of the National Career Guidance Advocacy Congress down the professional sphere and at the same time embark on a rapid assessment of professions covered by the mutual recognition arrangements in order to provide baseline data on competitiveness, indispensable to determining local labor market efficiency based on accurate and precise surpluses and shortage of concerned professions.”

In the National Career Guidance Advocacy Congress where Manzala delivered a statement of support, she said the PRC relishes the opportunity “to network with other concerned government agencies, specifically the Department of Education, Commission on Higher Education, and Department of Science and Technology, which are directly involved in the development of the Philippine’s human resource, and in a addressing job mismatch.”

She emphasized that the holding of the Professionals Summit is in pursuit of the PRC’s mandates and functions, especially in (a) regulating the practice of the 46 professions; (b) the conduct of licensure examinations for the graduates of higher education institutions; and (c) the registration and monitoring of the practice of 3.2 million professionals who said “constitute a considerable segment of the Philippines’s human resource.”

She said that at the Professionals Summit, the PRC will reiterate its commitment to global standards to contribute to the advancement of career advocacy in three (3) key areas, namely, (a) assessment; (b) career path; and (c) labor market opportunities.
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Labor and Employment Secretary Rosalinda Dimapilis-Baldoz yesterday said the Department of Labor and Employment welcomes the petition of the Provincial Bus Operators Association of the Philippines (PBOAP), Southern Luzon Bus Operators Association, Inc., Inter-City Bus Operators Association, Inc. (Interboa), and City San Jose del Monte Bus Operators Association (CSJDMBOA) asking the Supreme Court to nullify Department Order No. 118-12, the National Wages and Productivity Commission Guidelines No. 1 Series of 2012, and Memorandum Circular No. 2012-001 of the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB).

“We welcome this development–this latest challenge in our quest for reforms in the bus transport sector to provide our bus drivers and conductors better wages, more benefits and protection, and safe and healthy condition of work, and most of all, to provide safety and comfort to our bus-riding public by ensuring traffic order and discipline,” Baldoz said in a press statement.

“The petition will provide us the opportunity to further raise public awareness and understanding of the true employment situation of drivers and conductors in the bus transport sector and, hopefully, enable us to generate public support to the reforms that the DOLE are pursuing to provide our workers their rights and benefits provided and mandated for by law,” she added.

D.O. 118-12, the “Rules and Regulations Governing the Employment and Working Conditions of Drivers and Conductors in the Public Utility Bus Transport Industry” is a reform measure initiated by the DOLE and its attached agencies, namely, the Bureau of Working Condition, Occupational Safety and Health Center, National Wages and Productivity Commission, and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, in partnership with the LTFRB, Metro Manila Development Authority, and Land Transportation Office that calls for the implementation of a new compensation scheme for bus drivers and conductors, among other reforms for the bus transport sector.

Implemented starting last 1 July in Metro Manila, D.O. 118-12 orders bus operators to pay their drivers a fixed wage, including all mandated social benefits, and a performance-based pay that takes into account bus and passenger safety, adherence to traffic rules and regulations, ridership, enterprise performance, among other factors.

Prior to its full implementation, the DOLE and its tripartite partners conducted extensive consultations, and Technical Working Group meetings under the umbrella of the Bus Industry Tripartite Council to discuss, among other issues, the findings of the DOLE’s technical survey on the bus transport sector.

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Labor and Employment Secretary Rosalinda Dimapilis-Baldoz yesterday said the integration of career guidance into the K to 12, a program that makes kindergarden mandatory and adds two years to the present 10-year basic education, is a very important step in the country’s efforts to prepare young Filipinos’ entry to the world of work,  and thus, to curb youth unemployment.

“The DOLE support the K to 12.  As partner of the DepEd, we believe the program will ultimately benefit our students as they prepare for the world of work,” Baldoz said.

“In this light, DOLE and the Technical Education and Skills Development Uhtority will work in convergent fashion with the DepEd and the Commission on Higher Education to see the K to 12 succeed and realize its long-term benefits,” she added.

The labor and employment chief said the integration to career guidance in the basic education curriculum is a decisive step in transforming the role of guidance counseling from a mere disciplinarian in the old days to that of a pro-active influence agent who can guide students as they enter the world of work.

The K to 12 program forms the cornerstone to the Aquino III administration’s reform to strengthen and improve education and training across the wide spectrum of human resource development—from kindergarden to basic education and onto integrated language arts, science, mathematics, health, music, and “Edukasyon sa Pagpapakatao”  which comprehensively covers technical-vocational skills, such as agriculture/fishery including food/fish processing and horticulture; home economics (caregiving), bread and pastry production, automotive, dressmaking, tile setting, plumbing, welding, beauty care, physical education, novelty crafts, mechanical drafting, among others.

“The direction and outcome of education is holistic progress incorporating the skills of the 21st century, and a student shall attain to this provided he or she is equipped with the current and latest knowhow, empathy, and values that would afford the capacities (a) to live and work productively; (b) assess his personal potentials; (c) arrive at critical decisions based on information; and (d) actualize these effectively,” the DepEd said in describing the K to 12 program.

Towards this end, Baldoz said the DOLE and the DepEd, together with the other key agency-members of the Cabinet’s Human Development and Poverty Reduction cluster have signed a Memorandum of Understanding specifically to: (1) ensure that the curriculum and activities for secondary education will include career exploration and orientation to expose high school students to different career paths; (2) ensure that those identified and sent for training as acvocates or trainers are committed to developing the 21st century worker and believe that career guidance is an effective tool in addressing job-skill mismatch; (3) allow guidance counselors and guidance counselor designates to actively participate in the activities of NGOs organized by the DOLE on “official business”, including general assembly, capability building/training and conduct of career orientation sessions or seminars, and serving as advocates or trainers in career guidance; and (4) share knowledge or new technologies and methodologies, or good practices, especially on the Revitalized Homeroom Guidance Program (RHGP).

The memorandum of agreement was presented during the first National Career Guidance Advocacy Congress held at the Diamond Hotel on Roxas Boulevard, Manila last month, on the theme, “Follow the guide. Tag a Career. Like the future!”



Tags: bus TRO, k-12, prc, tourism

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