TESDA scraps one-month wait for FDHs who fail assessment

Filipino domestic workers in Central

DOMESTIC workers who fail the competency assessment of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) will no longer be required to wait for a month before they can take another assessment, according to a policy research firm.

Former Labor Undersecretary Nicon F. Fameronag, now president of the policy research Lilac Center for Public Interest, said the TESDA board last month approved a resolution scrap the requirement.

“This is a move in the right direction. It will open up more employment opportunities for women who choose to work abroad as domestic workers by eliminating delays in their getting the required national certification for domestic workers,” Fameronag said in a statement.

He said TESDA’s decision was is in line with President Duterte’s directive to Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III to make it easier for OFWs to avail the services of the government, shorten the processing time of their documents, and minimize their expenses.

Meeting on Feb. 3, the TESDA Board approved Resolution No. 2017-09, which amended the Training Regulations for Domestic Work NCII by deleting the provision on the one-month gap prior to the re-assessment of candidates who have failed in the competency assessment. Bello heads the TESDA board.

Fameronag said passing the competency assessment is a requirement before domestic workers are given their Certificate of Competency on Domestic Work NCII. The NCII on Domestic Work is required by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) in the recruitment and overseas deployment of domestic workers.

Citing available POEA data, Fameronag said the deployment of newly-hired domestic workers reached a high of 194,835 in 2015, an increase of 7.5 percent over the previous year.

“Unfortunately, despite strenuous efforts by the DOLE and the POEA to clamp down on the recruitment and deployment of domestic workers either through policy design or threats of outright bans, a host of factors, such as the lack of employment opportunities for women workers here at home, has led to the feminization of migration, such that new-hire domestic workers now constitute 37.8 percent of all new hire deployment,” Fameronag said.

“With 2.78 million unemployed Filipinos, 30.4 percent of whom are women or 845,120, increasing women participation in the labor market is key to attaining the sustainable development goal of decent work and economic growth,” he added.

Domestic work is now the first in the POEA’s top 10 skills of OFWs, followed by manufacturing laborers, nurses, waiters, cleaners and helpers in offices and hotels, home-based personal care workers, welders and flame cutters, civil engineers, and plumbers and pipe fitters. Laborers in building construction occupy the last spot in the skills category.