More rural folks to benefit in bid to expand online jobs program

EQUIPPED with a bigger budget, the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) aims to expand its Rural Impact Sourcing (RIS) program to link more people in far-flung areas to online jobs and employment opportunities.

DICT Undersecretary Monchito Ibrahim said that from 26 last year, they target to partner with 65 local government units all over the country this year to implement the RIS training program.

“A total of 534 graduates were produced in 2017. What we’re hoping to happen is that these 534 graduates would become future trainers. We are hoping that they are able to conduct echo trainings on their own without the participation of DICT,” he said in a press conference yesterday.

DICT officials and other stakeholders are in Cebu for the second Philippine Impact Sourcing Conference (Piscon) at the Waterfront Cebu City Hotel and Casino.

In Cebu, the RIS training program was implemented in Bogo City, Ginatilan and Dumanjug last year. This year, Barili will be added to the list.

In 2017, the DICT was able to secure a P22 million budget for the RIS training program through Senator Sonny Angara. This year, the budget was increased to P50 million.

An initiative of the DICT, the RIS is a technical training program that promotes ICT-enabled jobs as a high value economic activity in rural communities which are not yet ready to host Information Technology —Business Process Management (IT- BPM ) operations.

Ibrahim said that these training include different kinds of jobs like content writer, virtual assistants, web designers, digital marketers, and other similar online jobs.

“This is the emerging trend right now. As articulated in some Future of Work articles and studies of the World Economic Forum that in the future, most of the jobs will not be done in office spaces. But it can actually be done at home,” he said.

“The Philippines is one of the first early countries to adopt this trend which, to some countries, will still be a future trend,” he added.

In order to form a partnership with an LGU, Ibrahim said there must be an agreement that the DICT and the LGU will share half of the expenses to be incurred by the training program which runs for more than 10 days.

He said this is to ensure that LGUs are also encouraged to replicate the training on their own even after the training period provided by DICT.

Among the graduates of the RIS program last year in Bogo City was Jeric Japal who now works as a home-based web developer. He said he joined the program as he lost his previous job as a computer technician and he had a family to feed.

After graduating, Japal said he was able to land a job as a web developer and designer for a Cebu-based company.