The Special Program for the Employment of Students (SPES) continues to provide students a chance to experience office work and learn the fundamentals of having an 8-to-5 job, according to Human Resource Management Officer Melchor Ancheta.
The program, which was then initiated by former Mayor Mary Jane C. Ortega, is a summer job that hires ten selected students and is detailed in every department as part of the office personnel in the duration of the summer vacation time.
The City Government provides 60 percent of the students’ salaries while the 40 percent counterpart is provided by the Department Of Labor and Employment (DOLE). A student receives a salary of P124.80 per day for a one and a half- month job from the city government. DOLE’s counterpart salary is given to the SPES beneficiary after completing the summer job, through a check.
According to Ancheta, the summer job is a welcome respite from the students’ grueling schoolyear activities by learning basic office works while also earning.
Donna Marie Nisperos-Ducusin, a 20-year-old pharmacy aide graduate of the Central Ilocandia College of Sciences Arts and Technology (CICOSAT) and a resident of Barangay Calabugao, was hired in April 2007 and was assigned at the City Budget Office and the following year, at the Mayor’s Office. She said that while being employed temporarily, she has become more confident, self-reliant, sociable and hardworking.
“I had chance to meet Mayor Pablo Ortega and other high-ranking government officials,” Donna said.
Her job was to record incoming and outgoing communications on a logbook, answer telephone calls, running errands for the office and sometimes buying the snacks of her more senior officemates.
“When I first entered the job, I still didn’t know my co-SPES (beneficiaries) but now we have developed as closest of friends,” Donna added.
By being in the SPES, she also helped augment her family’s income, which she deemed as meager as her father Henry, 40 years old is a vegetable farmer and her mother, Jocelyn is a day-care worker. She has three younger siblings; two elementary pupils and a high school student.
“I also used my earnings to finish my college course which I eventually did,” she said. It was her last semester of school when she landed the said job. She also said that she would be willing to return to work in the city government if given the opportunity to be rehired.
Donna Marie was able to land a job through the SPES, with the endorsement of their barangay captain, Henry Nisperos, after looking for a job vacancy at DOLE.
“With the experience, I’m looking forward to use it in attaining my personal goals when I land another job,” she said and added that she is now connected to an insurance company as substitute for a cousin.
“Thanks to the SPES program of the city, it is a wonderful experience and develops a youth into a good citizen of the society.” |
