LABOR Secretary Bienvenido Laguesma wants to assess the rationale behind the holding of job fair activities by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) amid the supposed low success rate of job applicants.
In his first press conference since assuming office, Laguesma said he wants to know if it is still necessary to hold job fair activities as part of the government’s employment facilitation services.
“I would want to conduct a review of the impact of the job fairs we are holding,” Laguesma said.
He said he finds it unfortunate that only a small percentage of applicants during job fairs, usually held nationwide simultaneously during Labor Day (May 1) and Independence Day (June 12), actually land jobs.
“I have noticed that when we announce 100,000 job vacancies for job fairs, which would last one or two days, only 10 or 20 are immediately hired. These numbers must be increased,” said the returning labor chief.
“I want to have discussions with those providing such information. Are these actual numbers of job vacancies or are they simply promises?” he added.
During the last Labor Day job fairs, there were 2,262 jobseekers who were hired-on-the-spot out of the 153,397 local and overseas job vacancies offered.
During the recent Independence Day job fairs, some 2,405 job applicants were immediately hired out of the 151,325 local and overseas jobs that were offered.
