BARMM’s online livelihood learning facility launched

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Officials are expecting hundreds to enroll in the Bangsamoro government’s new online livelihood education program for those who lost jobs, or whose productivity got marginalized by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The facility, dubbed Tech4Ed Center, was established jointly by the Ministry of Labor and Employment-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao and the Department of Information and Communications Technology.

“We are anticipating the participation of many constituents in this online skills and livelihood learning program using only smart phones, without even going out of their homes,” BARMM’s labor minister, Romeo Sema, told reporters Saturday.

Sema and a key DICT official, Alimbzar Asum, together inaugurated BARMM’s Tech4Ed Center at the regional office of the labor ministry in Cotabato City last Thursday.

He said the center is under the watch of a key MOLE-BARMM official, Kaidar Rasdi Kangah, who shall also function as adviser on how residents of the region can avail of the distance learning program meant to provide beneficiaries essential livelihood technology.

Information technologists shall help oversee the center, to cater to vocational learners.

MOLE-BARMM officials are expecting a big number of former overseas workers forced by the COVID-19 pandemic to return to the country to enroll in the Tech4Ed Center.

In an online press forum Friday that Sema presided over, senior MOLE-BARMM officials announced that their ministry had extended a P20,000 cash in 2020 to 1,500 overseas workers who have returned to the Bangsamoro region for good as “seed money” for home-based entrepreneurial ventures.

Some of the beneficiaries are now retailers of mobile phone load credits while others are now peddling home-cooked food in their barangays, the MOLE-BARMM officials reported, citing records from their offices in Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi provinces.

Lawyer Naguib Sinarimbo, local government minister of BARMM, said Saturday they are thankful to the DICT for helping the MOLE-BARMM set-up the online learning facility.

“The gesture is well appreciated by the BARMM leadership,” Sinarimbo, regional spokesperson, said.

He said the Ministry of the Interior and Local Government-BARMM can help connect prospective learners in all of the region’s more than 100 towns to the online learning center in the Bangsamoro capitol in Cotabato City via their local government units.