28.1 C
Philippines
Sunday, November 3, 2024

1:42 PM

28.1 C
Philippines
Sunday, November 3, 2024

1:42 PM

TESDA offers coffee production training for ex-rebels

MISAMIS ORIENTAL (PIA)—The Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA)-10 has offered coffee production training to former rebels (FRs) in the far-flung areas of Northern Mindanao.

Along with members of the Poverty Reduction, Livelihood and Employment Cluster (PRLEC) under the Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (TF-ELCAC), TESDA has engaged in partnerships with private sectors that venture well in the coffee industry.

“TESDA, together with TF-ELCAC’s PRLEC, has partnered with Nestle as this is one of the products of the discussion made in one of the cluster’s peace and development conferences. Training will soon be conducted involving our former rebels (FRs) and the indigenous people (IPs) because they have the most suitable areas for coffee plantation/production,” Harry Banto, TESDA regional director said.

As the lead agency of PRLEC, TESDA recognizes the importance of equipping the FRs and IPs with skills to widen job options and show how sustainable livelihood cope with the fast-changing techniques and methods, he added.

Banto emphasized that President Rodrigo Duterte’s Executive Order No. 70 or ‘whole-of-nation approach’ that created the TF-ELCAC is one of the strategic ways to address people’s needs, thereby ending the communist terror groups’ activities in some geographically isolated communities.

Aside from coffee production training, he said, the PRLEC also gives agriculture-related skills training because these are the communities’ “most needed” assistance from the government as identified by the villagers.

He explained that the NTF-ELCAC’s PRLEC has taught people the strategies and techniques in farming, gardening, and horticulture, among many other things because data showed that there are still those in the mountains who lack knowledge and skills in making their lands productive—including livestock production.

Banto, however, is hopeful that even beyond the President’s term, the PRLEC’s program would prosper because of the strong support of the FR and IP communities.

“We can never really address problems in peace and security if we do nothing on poverty issues. This is a twin problem, and we in TESDA believe in that precept. Skills training is one of the most needed programs and services we can give. We really have to continue this program to empower our former rebels and IPs who had long been waiting for these. And now, in the administration of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte, said projects finally reached them,” Banto said. (JAKA/PIA-10/Misamis Oriental)