August 22, 2023 – CIBAC Party-List Representative Bro. Eddie Villanueva lauds the House of Representatives approval of House Bill 8400 or the Trabaho Para sa Pilipino bill which is one of the priority legislations of the Marcos administration.

House Bill 8400, principally authored by CIBAC Representative Bro. Eddie Villanueva, mandates the establishment of a Jobs Creation Plan (JCP) that shall serve as a comprehensive and national master plan on employment generation and recovery. It aims to promote and ensure the employability, competitiveness, wellness and productivity of Filipino workers through efficient, effective and timely delivery of skills trainings and development programs.

Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) revealed that the country had a 95.7% employment rate in May 2023 – or about 48.26 million Filipinos employed. There remains 4.3% or about 2.17 million unemployed Filipinos out of the 50.43 million workforce.

“One of the key areas to focus on in order to produce more jobs is the crucial linkage between investments and job trainings. We must make sure that for every possible investment or business that will come to us, we must equip our workforce with the necessary skill and knowledge to ascertain the employability of our people. HB 8400 addresses this challenge. Through synergism and collaboration of our concerned government agencies, investments will be proactively matched with appropriate job trainings, government funding and incentives to ensure coordination and harmonization of our efforts that will ultimately result to creation of jobs for our people,” says CIBAC Rep. Bro. Eddie Villanueva.

“With HB 8400, there will be a whole-of-government approach to employment generation. Jobs creation will cease to be a concern of only one or two government agencies,” according to CIBAC Rep. Villanueva.

“Also, we are not only after quantity of jobs – but equally concerned of quality. Decent jobs is our goal. Generating decent and stable employment must be itself a primary objective alongside our pursuit of development. With this bill, we will make sure that the kind of workers needed by industries will be the ones that we will train and supply to them so that our workers will be valued and compensated properly,” adds the CIBAC solon.

The CIBAC solon also expresses gratitude to Representatives Gus Tambunting and Fidel Nograles who are co-authors and sponsors of the bill for the valuable contribution to the passage of the bill.