Over 1,400 new workers are needed by four Japanese companies with manufacturing facilities inside the First Philippine Industrial Park (FPIP) economic zone in the cities of Santo Tomas and Tanauan in Batangas.
Lopez-led FPIP posted the employment opportunities during the “Sulong Buhay Job Fair” that FPIP and the local government unit (LGU) of Santo Tomas City, along with other local stakeholders, held inside the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) campus also in Santo Tomas City.
FPIP External Relations Manager John Carlo Navalta said the four companies; Brother Industries (Philippines) Inc., Canon Business Machines (Philippines), Inc., Ibiden (Philippines), Inc., and Philippine Manufacturing Co. of Murata, Inc.; need at least 1,430 new workers.
Navalta also said that close to a thousand of the new openings are for engineers, accountants, nurses, human resource personnel and other office-based workers.
So far, 457 of the job applicants, most of them fresh or recent PUP graduates, have hurdled the initial screening and will undergo the next stage of evaluation and screening, including interviews. Roughly a thousand jobs remain open for job seekers.
Santo Tomas Mayor Arth Jhun Aguilar Marasigan said that the LGU and other stakeholders in the city regularly hold the job fair to match, on one hand, the search among companies in Santo Tomas City for new workers, with the need among Santo Tomas residents for gainful employment, on the other hand.
“This is one way for us to help the locators hire professionals who are home-grown talents in Santo Tomas and the province of Batangas. At the same time, it gives Tomasinos opportunities to get decent and high-quality jobs,” she pointed out.
Santo Tomas City Vice Mayor Catherine Jaurigue-Perez, for her part, noted the importance of collaboration among various local stakeholders like FPIP, its locators and the PUP for the benefit of the city. According to Jaurigue-Perez, the collaboration contributes to the city’s growth.
Lopez-controlled First Philippine Holdings Corporation, together with partner Sumitomo Corporation of Japan, established FPIP as a world-class location for global manufacturers and traders, as well as a platform for creating jobs for ordinary Filipinos and tax revenues for the government.
The 520-hectare ecozone, straddling Santo Tomas and Tanauan in Batangas, provides employment for almost 70,000 Filipinos, aside from generating hundreds of millions of pesos in tax revenues for the host LGUs.