BAGUIO City Rep. Mark Go has filed a bill that seeks to create a tripartite council to address job-skills mismatch in the country.

Go, in filing House Bill 8210, said that figures released by the Philippine Statistics Administration showed that unemployment rate went down to 8.7 percent in October from a high of 17.6 percent in April.

However, data revealed that 23.9 percent of the unemployed were college graduates, 16.7 percent were college undergraduates, 6.4 percent were senior high school graduates and 36.8 percent were junior high school graduates.

“With the adoption and implementation of the K-12 system, we hoped to train our learners, particularly those enrolled under the technical-vocational strand, such that they will already be job ready by the time they graduate from senior high school,” Go said in his explanatory note.

He lamented that job-skills mismatch has been one of the long-time challenges in developing the country’s employment situation.

House Bill 8210 mandates the Commission on Higher Education to to create a tripartite council to be composed of representatives from the government, academe and industry. The council will formulate policies and programs to address job-skills mismatch in the country.

The council shall monitor employment, underemployment and job-skills mismatch, formulate and implement short and long term policies, plans and programs and conduct an inventory, review and evaluation of courses.

It will also assess the qualifications and skills of students and graduates of tertiary and techvoc education and training; conduct an inventory job specifications; and recommend to the President, Congress and other government institutions policy measures that needs to be undertaken in addressing underemployment.