MANILA – The Technical Education and Skills Development Authority in Region 11 (TESDA-11) plans to strengthen its intervention in conflict-affected areas, an official said on Thursday.
TESDA-11 director Lorenzo Macapili said the agency's intervention must not only end on skills training provision.
"It (intervention) has to be sustainable. We need the support and inputs of other agencies, NGOs (non-government organizations and the LGUs (local government units), down to the barangay level, to achieve this," Macapili told the Philippine News Agency in an interview.
According to Macapili, there were many places in the region that were declared peaceful by the military.
"But when the military left, they are back to (being inharmonious) because there was no sustainable intervention," he said.
TESDA-11 has identified 331 barangays it considers conflict-affected. The agency is currently doing the profiling of these barangays, according to Macapili.
He said TESDA-11 held a meeting with different agencies, NGOs and Davao City LGU and oriented them with its "Indicative Action Plan" for July to December. A joint regional poverty reduction livelihood and employment cluster and provincial task force cluster meeting on Executive Order 70, on the other hand, is scheduled Thursday in Davao Oriental.
"Under EO 70, government agencies' programs are harmonized depending on the needs of the communities," Macapili said.
In an earlier statement, Macapili said TESDA will anchor all its programs on the needs of the affected communities in a holistic approach to come up with a doable action plan composed of programs and activities “that will be implemented by us with all resources being harmonized”.
He told the PNA it is important to assess first the communities, for TESDA and partners to know the proper intervention, adopting the value chain programming approach to be implemented by cluster agencies.
Meanwhile, Macapili said convergence meetings are also slated on July 9, 11, 19, 23 and 25.
"We will assess the community needs, will have community dialogues, community profiling, and identify problems from July 5-27," he said.
Macapili added that the Department of Social Welfare and Development, teachers, and trainers will join TESDA's provincial task force.
The results of assessments will be presented to the Provincial Capitol, and the designing of the value chain policy programs will be set in August. The program design will then be presented to the communities for enhancement and finalization.
Implementation of programs and policies is expected in September, according to Macapili. (PNA)
