55,000 vacancies for jobseekers in Middle East, others

Government job website offers more than 55,000 vacancies

More than 55,000 jobs await unemployed Filipinos or those seeking better opportunities based on postings on the Phil-Job Net website, Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz said yesterday.

Phil-Job Net (http://phil-job.net) is the government’s official job portal. It is managed by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE).

Baldoz said employers and licensed recruitment agencies posted the job vacancies in res-ponse to the government’s call for the private sector to help mitigate job-skills mismatch.

Baldoz added the portal also aimed to “strengthen labor market information services for job seekers.”

She said the portal is undergoing “re-engineering to make it more user-friendly and comprehensive.”

Some 160,000 job applicants have registered on the website.

Baldoz has directed DOLE regional officers to help encourage more people to use the portal, especially with Saudi Arabia’s announcement of a freeze in hiring of Filipino household service workers (HSWs) or domestic helpers.

The development followed the breakdown of negotiations between Saudi Arabia and the Philippines concerning the latter’s demands for a $400 minimum monthly salary for Filipino domestic helpers as well as submission by prospective Saudi employers of vicinity maps of their residences and their opening of bank account to ensure that they would be able to pay Filipino workers’ salaries.

In restricting the hiring of Filipino workers, Saudi Arabia also wants to provide employment to some 500,000 locals.

The hiring restriction is expected to affect some 35,000 Filipino domestic helpers.

According to DOLE’s Bureau of Labor Employment director Maria Criselda Sy, 1,191 of the 55,068 job vacancies are for HSWs that were posted by employers and recruiters in the Philippines and abroad.

“This shows that there are options available for a wide variety of skilled, qualified, and even multi-skilled workers,” Sy said.

But she underscored the need for job seekers to “hone up, upgrade or retool on the proper school” so that they would qualify for the available jobs.

Sy added that recruiters have posted job opportunities for HSWs in Romania, Singapore, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, and “surprisingly, even from Saudi Arabia itself.”

Sy also said that there are 7,606 “skills-for-hire” being advertised through the websiteShe said this indicates the “growing practice by a wide variety of skilled workers to ‘advertise’ their search for jobs and their qualifications in the Phil-JobNet system.”

A BLE report showed that among the job vacancies being advertised on the website are customer service assistants, call center agents, production or factory workers, cashiers, carpenters, data encoders, pharmacists, domestic helpers, and sales clerks.

Source:  By Sheila Crisostomo , The Philippine Star