BY GILBERT P. BAYORAN
Negros Occidental 3rd District Rep. Jose Francisco Benitez has filed House Bill No. 9807, or the Job Next Act of 2021, similar to Singapore’s SkillsFuture program, that aims to provide a skills voucher program for Filipinos to gain new and emerging skills for jobs of the future.
Benitez said the bill seeks to encourage and give incentives for worker upskilling and reskilling to stimulate innovation literacy, and support the labor force in adapting to technologies that have the potential to disrupt jobs.
It also aims to integrate seamlessly global skills trends with domestic industries’ skills through profound and innovative transformation in high quality training and skills development, he added.
As the country slowly pivots to recovery, Benitez said the Job Next Bill is a window of opportunity to rethink how economies and businesses will react and adapt to the “new normal”.
It is also an opportunity to build and shift to resilient and sustainable economic and business reforms that will maximize the realities of an uncertain environment, he said.
Benitez added that the timing cannot be better for the Jobs Next Bill, to ride on the change ushered in by the momentum, and channel that for the Philippines to thrive in the fourth industrial revolution.*
