13 April 2012
Construction has officially begun on a training center seen to become a new hub for technical vocational studies in the country.
The Human Resource Development Training Center soon to rise at Fort Bonifacio in Taguig City is being built on an agreement by the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) and the Department of National Defense with the government of South Korea through the Korean International Cooperation Agency (KOICA).
Under the agreement signed in October last year, the South Korean government will provide a $7.5 million (about P320 million) grant to cover the construction of the four-story training center at the Libingan ng mga Bayani, provide the design and equipment, dispatch Korean experts on technical guidance for the training, and send Filipino officials and trainers for further training in Korea.
A total of 2,000 technical vocational education trainers and school administrators are targeted to be trained for the five-year period of the project from 2010 to 2014.
Secretary Joel Villanueva, TESDA Director General, thanked the government of South Korea for funding the facility and said that the center will be a place where competencies of trainers can be further honed.
He acknowledged that the agency has its hands full in developing the competencies of trainers in lower level qualifications, given the thousands of technical vocational institutions (TVIs) that it supervises.
To date, TESDA supervises more than 4,500 TVIs consisting of 4,148 TVET institutions, 365 public schools and training centers, 124 TESDA Technology Institutions, and 822 enterprises providing learnership and apprenticeship programs.
There are more than 23,000 trainers in 215 qualifications or courses employed in these institutions.
“The center is envisioned to fill the gap in areas beyond the reach of government due to inherent limitation of its resources. TESDA can be the source of trainers who will be screened, trained and whose competencies can be developed at the HRD center making them certified specialists in their specializations,” Villanueva said.
The TESDA chief added that the HRD center will also be able to provide other approaches such as mentoring, focused research and development and school/center management, which many technical vocational institutions need.
“Trainers are at the heart in the provision of quality education and training of Filipino skilled workers. Good trainers produce high quality graduates,” Villanueva said.
“We hope that the Korean assistance through the HRD center would translate to better educated, highly-skilled and globally-competitive workers that the economy requires,” he added.
Upon its completion, the Taguig HRD center will be the fourth training center built by KOICA in the Philippines.
The training centers earlier built in Quezon City and Bulacan were dedicated to develop the Filipino talent in animation and software development, while the one in Davao is focused in agriculture mechanization.
Share this page
