LUCENA CITY – This city's Public Employment Service Office (PESO) is giving dignity to cash-for-work laborers by tapping their potential and giving them more responsibilities in the community.
City PESO Manager Cristina Encina on Thursday said one of the innovations introduced by their office is giving those enrolled in the Department of Labor and Employment’s (DOLE) Tulong Panghanapbuhay sa Ating Disadvantaged/Displaced Workers (TUPAD) other tasks apart from the usual repair or cleanliness duty.
She said that aside from the usual street sweeping, the TUPAD beneficiaries were assigned to do office work like database encoding.
“My office strives to give them (TUPAD workers) dignity by tapping their other potential and not confining them to street sweeping. Although street sweeping is, of course, a dignified job,” Encina added.
However, she did not elaborate on the number of TUPAD workers tapped for office duties.
She credited this innovation of giving more dignified work to TUPAD beneficiaries as one of the reasons her office bagged awards in five categories for highly-urbanized cities (HUCs) in Region 4A for the year 2022.
Presently, the Lucena City PESO is vying for the national awards come April or May this year for the same categories which include: PESO Employment Information System (PEIS) Champion (Applicant & Establishment Registration and Vacancy Solicitation); High Performing PESO (Provision of Labor Market Information); High Performing PESO (Referral and Placement of Qualified Jobseekers); High Performing PESO (Conduct of Career Advocacy and Employment Coaching; and Most Number of DOLE Programs Facilitated and Reported in the Monthly Employment Report (MER).
“We are now in the process of Modes of Verification required by the national DOLE which include submission of documentation and justification that resulted to these awards by the regional DOLE,” Encina said in a phone interview.
Though short-staffed, the Lucena City PESO ably delivered employment services including conducting career guidance to Grade 12 students, driving the job qualifiers to their place of work after being hired, and encoding 37,000 job applications in DOLE database for the year 2022.
Her office recorded more than 6,000 jobseekers hired and held several jobs fair last year that attracted more than 900 applicants each event. (PNA)
