The Technical Skills Development Authority has lauded its regional office in the south as “topmost contributor” to the agency’s Program Expenditure Classification, a government gauge on organizational performance set by the Department of Budget and Management.
As this developed, Tesda Director-General Isidro Lapeña approved the implementation of more than P270 million worth of Technical Vocational Education Training programs, Tesda documents showed.
Director Omarkhayyam Ibil Dalagan of Tesda in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao said this included support to rice production for farmer-technical vocational students, as part of President Rodrigo Duterte’s commitment to the normalization process under the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro entered into during the Aquino administration in 2014.
Dalagan said P270,117,123 worth of TVET entrusted by the national government to the now BARMM regional office is “unprecedented in ARMM history.”
“This is addition to the P43 million earlier committed to Tesda-BARMM” by the national government, Dalagan said.
In a certificate of commendation awarded last week to Dalagan, Tesda top-rated its BARMM office “for high percentage compliance in implementing the agency’s TVET programs (in accordance with) industry standards and requirements.”
DBM defines PrexC as “restructuring the agency’s budget by grouping all recurring activities as well as projects under the different programs or strategies being pursued by the agency to meet its objectives and mandates.
“The output contributed by the Region allowed the agency to successfully surpass its target commitment under the said performance Indicator in the GAA [General Appropriations Act] of 2018,” reads the commendation signed by Lapeña.
In his letter to BARMM Chief Minister Hadji Murad Ebrahim dated July 30, Dalagan said the P272 million approved last week for Tesda BARMM TVET Programs have been allotted, thus: P55,845,873.00 for Skills Training for Employment Program (STEP); P31,496,250 for Rice Enhancement Scholarship Program (RESP); and P 184,775,000 under the Universal Access to Quality Education Act.
But Dalagan lamented the lack of good training centers provided by the private sector, and he said the challenge to the Moro people is to invest on education for the future of the youth.
Dalagan said many technical-vocational schools in BARMM fell short of standards in Tesda evaluation, and that some school administrators would even attempt to bribe Tesda executives to allow them access to TVET funds, offering up to 30 percent of return kickback.
He said he had flatly rejected a similar offer from a “school owner” asking for P30 million worth of TVET study grant funds, supposedly to allow free enrollment and subsidized schooling for technical vocational students”•but had offered 30 percent of the amount to turn the program into “ghost scholarship.”
Dalagan said he instead counseled the “school owner” offering 30 percent in fund kickback return to just improve on the facilities and teaching quality of his school to get even in Tesda assessment and evaluation on schools and private technical vocational (Tech-Voc) training centers.
But other local schools passed national Tesda assessment, including the Academia De Tecnologia in Mindanao which provides modern equipment for cookery and Computer Servicing Training as NCII programs.
Aladin Sumail, president of the Cotabato City-based Academia De Tecnologia in Mindanao, said he looked forward to regional Tesda-BARMM school capability assessment and evaluation.
Sumail added the school administration is up to a planned expansion program for bread and pastry in cookery, as well as for driving and troubleshooting basics, and for light steelworks including welding which is opened for female students.