DOLE to hire 5K ‘healthy economic recovery officers’

MANILA – The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) is set to hire some 5,000 workers nationwide who will help them better serve the people, particularly workers in the localities.

Labor Assistant Secretary Dominique Tutay said they will be hiring 5,600 Barangay Healthy Economic Recovery Officers (HEROES) all over the country to gather information from employees regarding the status of their employment to determine forms of assistance that they can provide to them.

“Our aim is to gather information on workers at barangay level on the state of their employment if they are employed, unemployed, what assistance they need,” she said in a Laging Handa briefing on Thursday.

She added that they would also like to know what possible assistance they can extend to employers.

“The same goes for information on establishments. If they are up, or still closed, what assistance do they need? They also aim to extend the program of DOLE and its affiliates. We found out that it was not known at the local level on how to ask for help from DOLE. This will be done by Barangay HEROES,” Tutay said.

Applicants must be 18 to 30 years old and may visit the DOLE regional and field offices to file their applications.

“If they are high school graduates, finished Technical Vocation (Tech Voc) courses, college level, they are qualified. Part of their jobs would be profiling of the houses, establishments in a locality. It also included encoding jobs,” she said.

As for their salary, Tutay said it will be based on the daily minimum wage of the area where they are hired.

Once hired, they will be working for three to six months.

The program is under Mission RACE (Rebooting Activities through Community Engagements) and Tulong Panghanapbuhay sa Ating Disadvantaged/Displaced Workers Program.

It is part of the National Employment Recovery Strategy (NERS) eight-point employment recovery agenda which include providing additional wage subsidy for private sector workers, retooling and upskilling of the Filipino workforce, and extending assistance to businesses and employers, among others.

The full implementation of the NERS agenda will entail a budget of about PHP1.14 trillion and is expected to generate 220,000 jobs and benefit over 1.4 million Filipinos.