Trade and Industry (DTI) Secretary Fred Pascual is
encouraging employers to upskill workers and make them future-ready.
Pascual stressed this at the launch of the Advanced Manufacturing Workforce
Development Alliance (AMDev) Program supported by the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID) on Monday, March 13.
"Crucial to manufacturing development is advancing our
workforce pipeline, so we fully support and will continue to support AmDev.
Preparing our workforce for the future is essential, as it is one of DTI’s
strategic priorities," said Pascual.
"We encourage employers to upskill workers. But we also
recognize aligning systems of learning as equally important. With around
790,000 Filipino graduates annually, companies should find it promising to
readily recruit smart, young, and productive workforce for their manufacturing
operations."
The AMDev Program is a 5-year (2022-2027) public-private
partnership supported by USAID and implemented by Unilab Foundation (ULF). It
seeks to develop a highly skilled and adaptive workforce pipeline that meets
the evolving requirements of the advanced manufacturing sector through
better-defined, harmonized skills and qualifications descriptors, competency,
and training standards.
The main goal of the program is to improve the capacity of
the education system to develop human capital aligned with the requirements of
Industry 4.0.
To deliver this goal, the program will seek to achieve three
Intermediate Results (IRs) such as improved competencies of target
manufacturing workforce that are relevant to Industry 4.0 needs; improved
enabling environment for advanced manufacturing workforce development; and
mproved stakeholder readiness for Industry 4.0.
Further, one of the key activities of AMDev is the
establishment of the Advanced Manufacturing Institute (AMI) that will be
operationalized by Alliance Core Partners, namely Amherst Laboratories, Inc,
Belmont Softgel Pharma Corporation, Fastech Advanced Assembly, and Western
Digital. Meanwhile, among its government partners are the Commission on Higher
Education (CHED), Department of Finance (DOF), Department of Trade and Industry
(DTI), Department of Science and Technology (DOST), and Technical Education and
Skills Development Authority (TESDA).
Initiatives such as AMDev are vital to the DTI's work of
tapping and leveraging the immense potential of the Philippines as a
manufacturing hub. Through AMDev, the Filipino workforce will have the
opportunity to learn new skills and knowledge that will further strengthen the
competencies of the country's manufacturing sector.
The various initiatives that coincide with AMDev are aligned
with the national government's work of responding to the learning needs and
realities of the country's workforce, especially in manufacturing.
The DTI endeavors to implement an industrialization strategy
driven by science, technology, and innovation. As this comes in, it is vital
for the country to also adopt industry 4.0 technologies that will make
industries more competitive. However, to successfully implement this, our workforce
must be highly skilled. Relative to this, the DTI will soon launch an industry
4.0 pilot factory, which will house cutting-edge manufacturing technologies
like advanced robotics, the intelligence of things, and virtual and augmented
reality simulations, among others.
Likewise, to ensure organizations and regional governments
realize the value of adopting and investing in digital literacy, DTI, together
with the Department of Education (DepEd), Commission on Higher Education
(CHED), and Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA),
launched the Philippine Skills Framework (PSF) Initiative. The initiative seeks
to create a framework to upskill, reskill, and prepare our human capital and
workforce to respond and adapt to the changing needs of the industry. The DTI
is working on PSF for electronics, which AMDev and other similar initiatives
can gain from for their workforce.