Jobs mismatch, not labor shortage, affecting local construction sector

By Catherine Talavera (The Philippine Star), Oct 26, 2017

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine construction sector is experiencing a mismatch between available jobs and the required skill set as 10 million Filipinos remain unemployed, a trade official said.

On the sidelines of the ASEAN+6 Construction Forum, Trade Undersecretary Ruth Castelo denied any shortage of labor in the country’s construction sector.

“There is mismatch between the labor available and the skills required by the industry,” she said.

Castelo noted that concerns of skilled workers’ shortage may only be felt in Metro Manila, since the pool of workers reside in the provinces.

With the Duterte administration’s promise for the Golden Age of Infrastructure through its Build Build Build program, Castelo said the construction industry will need an additional 2.5 million skilled construction workers.

This is on top of the current 3.3 million supply of construction workers.

“The industry says we need about 2.5 million until 2020 to 2021. But the number will diminish slowly as the projects are completed,” Castelo said.

Despite the need for more labor in construction sector, the trade official said the government would like to first encourage Filipinos to fill the available jobs in the construction industry, rather than hiring foreign workers.

“Before we encourage foreign workers, it’s not that we prohibit (them), but we will give preference to the Filipinos,” Castelo said.

In order to address the labor needs of the construction industry, Castelo said the government is training available pool of talent to make them qualify for the skills needed by the industry.

“There are a lot of big construction companies that have their own training facilities so we also encourage them to do more training,” Castelo said.

In addition, Castelo said the construction industry is also looking at increasing the salary of workers by P200 to P300 in line with attracting more talent.

Despite the mismatch of labor in the construction sector, Castelo said the government is not yet in a position to resort to the hiring of foreign workers.

“We will give preference to the Filipinos,”Castelo said.

The trade undersecretary emphasized that under the Philippine labor code,if there are Filipinos who are capable and available to do the work needed, the preference should be given to Filipino workers before any alien worker permit may be issued.

As for the case of infrastructure projects to be funded by Official Development Assistance (ODA) from other countries, Castelo said the Philippine government is looking to ask the respective foreign governments to allow Filipino contractors to join the bidding process.

“We will probably lobby to allow our contractors because it’s also one way of developing the skills and expertise of our Filipino contractors,” Castelo said.

Earlier this year, the Duterte administration announced funding for the development of five regional airports would be shifted from public private partnership to ODA.