Government should grant preferential tax treatment and other incentives to multi-language training centers to enable the country to produce more workers with the ability to speak fluent English and other foreign languages, Cebu Rep. Eduardo Gullas said.
"We must build up private sector investments in centers that can provide good-quality but affordable training in English and other foreign languages, not just in Metro Manila but in the provinces as well. We have to hone the competitive advantage of our college graduates," Gullas, who once served as House majority leader, said.
"This is not just about jobs in call centers. This is about jobs, both here and abroad, across all industries, in an increasingly globalized environment," added Gullas, an educator and author of a bill seeking to revive English by increasing the number of hours spent to teach the language in schools.
"For instance, Japanese companies in the country, particularly those engaged in information technology services, are aggressively recruiting Japanese-speaking workers in order to boost productivity. This is because while the language of all software is English, the manuals of instruction are in Japanese," Gullas said.
The Commission on Higher Education earlier bared that a total of 447,847 Filipinos would graduate from college this year.
This has officials worried that a deepening mismatch in the skills of graduates and the labor requirements of industries would only result in more college-trained Filipinos joining the ranks of the unemployed.
Only last week, one of the country's largest outsourcing solutions providers, IBM Daksh Business Process Services Philippines Inc., desperate to recruit fluent English-speaking workers, went as far as to offer fresh college graduates and young professionals free call-center language training for one whole month, with a training allowance to boot.
At the end of the 30-day training period, those who make the grade would get jobs right away.
Another outsourcing solutions provider, PeopleSupport Inc., unable to recruit the desired number of Filipino personnel with bilingual skills in English and Spanish, decided instead to put up a new call center in Spanish-speaking Central America.
PeopleSupport, however, managed to increase its fluent English-speaking, college-trained Filipino call-center agents from 4,000 to 5,000 last year.
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