Kenya is seeking partnerships with the Philippines in enhancing technical education and skills development for Kenyans seeking opportunities abroad.
Diaspora Affairs Principal Secretary Roseline Njogu on Friday met with Philippines’ Technical Education and Skills Development Authority officials led by Deputy Director-General on Policies and Planning, Rosanna Urdaneta to discuss areas of mutual interest, key among them technical education.
TESDA is Philippine’s agency tasked with managing and supervising technical education and skills development.
In a statement released by the State Department on its social media, PS Njogu expressed her admiration for TESDA’s initiatives and emphasized the potential benefits of adapting best practices to provide and buttress Kenyans’ competitive edge in the job market for Kenyan diaspora.
“This engagement not only reaffirms the government’s commitment to understanding and harnessing the potential of labour markets but also paves way for a stronger partnership that can significantly benefit both countries towards their development agenda,” the statement said.
Kenya has in recent years invested in the TVET sector, with the current administration committing to put more money in the sector.
In the 2022-23 budget, the government allocated Sh1.8 billion for construction and equipping of Technical Training Institutes and Vocational Training Centres, while Sh1.1 billion has been set aside to increase access and improve the quality of Technical and Vocational Education and Training programs under the East Africa Skills Transformation and Regional Integration Project.
The Ministry of Education is seeking total ICT integration in TVET learning, achieve total integration of special needs in education and training in TVET, and support the TVET sector to attain world-class status, so that it can be in a position to provide “TVET Tourism” by attracting trainees from across the world and grow into a benchmarking destination.
In this regard, the government in March announced a plan to export more skilled labourers and not just domestic workers.
Labour and Skills development PS Geoffrey Kaituko said the country would benefit more if it continued investing in skilled workers.
Kaituko ast the time said the government was committed to opening up more opportunities in other continents.
“This year we want to invest more in our labour migration, our remittances have been almost Sh500bn but now we want to increase to Sh1 trillion,” Kaituko told the press when he appeared before the Labour Committee.
On the safety of labour migrants, the PS said the lack of enough personnel in the gulf countries has been a challenge. For instance, he noted, in Saudi Arabia there was only one attache who in charge of administrative issues for the whole country.
PS Njogu is on a work-study tour on diaspora management accompanied by among others Diaspora Affairs and Migrant Workers Parliamentary Committee chairperson Lydia Mnene.
Diaspora PS in Philippines to benchmark on migrant workers’ welfare, rights protection
