Senator Bam Aquino calls on private companies to relax its educational requirement rules in hiring employees to help address the problem of job mismatch in the country.

“I’m aware that companies have certain educational standards regarding their employees but they also have the responsibility help the country and one way of doing it is to at least relax their requirements,” Aquino said.

Job mismatch happens when an applicant cannot comply with the demands of educational requirements for a position.

“This problem contributes to our growing unemployment rate, which, as of last count increased from 7.1 percent to 7.5 percent in the first quarter of 2014,” Aquino said, citing a report from the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE).

DOLE reported that there are 3.8 million job vacancies waiting to be filled, especially in industries such as services, construction, tourism, and information, technology and communications, and the business process outsourcing (BPO).

“However, many of these vacancies remain as such because of the job and skills mismatch,” said Aquino, chairman of the Senate Committee on Trade, Commerce and Entrepreneurship.

Aside from the cooperation of private companies, Aquino said the government should take steps to address job mismatch, which stemmed from lack of proper education and training of applicants for a particular line of work.

Aquino called on the DOLE, Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and the Department of Education (DepEd) to join forces in combating the prevalent job mismatch problem.

“These four government agencies should launch a massive awareness drive in high schools to inform students on what the right course to take in college,” Aquino said.