DOLE: 2 recruitment firms to help 500 Yolanda survivors find work abroad

Two labor recruitment agencies will help at least 500 victims of Super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) find work abroad free of charge, the Department of Labor and Employment on Thursday said.

Philippine Overseas Employment Administration head Hans Leo Cacdac said International Skills Development (ISD) can recruit more than 300 workers in Samar and Leyte.

A DOLE news release quoted Cacdac as saying ISD “pledged to hire over 300 workers for ABV Rock Group, one of its principal clients in the Kingdom [of Saudi Arabia].”

He added ISD President Levi de Mesa wrote to inform him that ISD recruitment personnel “will be in Cebu City to coordinate worker recruitment from Samar and Leyte.”

“We will need more than 300 workers,” the DOLE quoted De Mesa as saying in his letter.

De Mesa said ABV Rock Group’s manpower requirements include a worker for each of the following positions:

electrical supervisor
tiling foreman
civil engineering supervisor
finishing supervisor
assistant civil engineer
civil engineer
mechanical engineer
finishing marble works foreman
finishing for doors, gypsum and ceiling foreman
assistant supervisor, finishing group assistant supervisor
finishing supervisor
general foreman
technician
welder.

The company also needs to hire:

electrical foremen
mason block works and plastering foremen
masons, block works and plastering workers
tiling and finishing masons
marble fixers/installer masons
finishing carpenters for doors, gypsum and ceiling
shuttering carpenters
painters
steel fixers
scaffolders
scaffolding foremen
steel fixers.

“This is a magnanimous and timely offer of employment assistance,” DOLE Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz said of the ISD pledge.

Baldoz said a second company, Skills International Co. Inc., claimed it can initially “help 200 affected families by sending a family member to work abroad free of charge.”

“We would like to work in partnership with the DOLE in any project to help the Filipinos,” the DOLE quoted Skills International president Marivic Daas as telling Baldoz during a visit to the DOLE office.

Baldoz thanked the two companies for the gesture of support.

Last week, Baldoz directed all DOLE regional offices and employment service offices to help Yolanda victims with work, livelihood, and training assistance.

Premier recruitment agencies

The DOLE said ISD, founded in 1981, is “one of the premiere and top recruitment companies of the Philippines” and had received POEA’s Hall of Fame Award and the Presidential Award.

It added ABV Rock Group of Sweden is a global construction industry leader employing many highly skilled Filipino workers in Saudi Arabia.

ABV is noted for its sustained quality reliability, both as a principal and specialist contractor in interlinked sectors of the Saudi economy covering buildings and civil works, construction of highways and pipelines, airports, hospitals, industrial plants, dams, bridges, and underground storage and tunneling, DOLE added.

Meanwhile, Cacdac said the POEA will visit Ormoc City from Dec. 13 to 14 to conduct a relief and medical mission and profile candidates for a January 2014 job fair.

“Aside from the relief and medical mission, we will already profile prospective OFWs, see to it that they have basic documents, such as birth certificates and clearances, and alert them of the overseas job fair. In that way, we will already know their basic skills and inclination and so tailor the job fair vacancies that our partners will bring,” said Cacdac. — LBG, GMA News