By HENRY EMPEÑO | Subic Bay Freeport

MORE job openings are being offered in the Subic Bay Freeport as businesses begin to bounce back from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, bringing relief to unemployed workers and residents sidelined by quarantine lockdowns and the resulting business slowdown.

Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) Chairman and Administrator Wilma T. Eisma said a total of 185 work positions were opened by various companies during the second SBMA virtual job fair conducted here on Tuesday as part of the agency’s 28th founding anniversary program.

She said a total of 2,139 job-seekers applied for the 185 positions offered during the job fair that was conducted through video conference.

The firms that attracted the most applicants were cooling and power systems manufacturer Sanyo Denki, with 180 applicants for the 10 job openings it offered; vehicle trader United Auctioneers, with 154 applications for four job openings; and BPO firm Uptimised Corporation, which received 82 applications for its eight openings.

“This is proof that a lot of our kababayans needed jobs desperately under the circumstances, and I’d like to say that both the SBMA and the business locators here are stepping up to meet this rising demand,” Eisma said.

“Subic is definitely back on track—although not on full speed as yet, but we are getting there, as you could see from the new job openings being offered,” she added.

The job generation program, Eisma said, is a combined public-private effort, with SBMA and Subic companies putting out new projects to take in more workers as much as possible.

In the Nov. 24 job fair organized by the SBMA Labor Department, 11 Subic-registered companies offered a total of 54 job positions.

These included Sanyo Denki Philippines, Inc. and Subic Bay Freeport Grain Terminal Services, Inc., which both listed 10 job openings;  Uptimised Corporation, with 8; DBA Global Shared Services, Inc. and Subic Bay International Terminal Corp., with 5 openings each; Sams Group of Companies, Toyota Subic Inc., and United Auctioneers Inc., with 4 new positions each; Advanced Composite Systems Inc., with 2; and Subic Consolidated Projects, Inc. and S-Corp Phils., with 1 opening each.

On the other hand, 21 other companies elsewhere filed for request for recruitment assistance (RRA) with the SBMA with a total of 131 job offerings, said SBMA labor manager Melvin Varias.

Varias also noted that of the 2,139 applicants for various positions, 56.2% were from Olongapo City; 28% from Zambales; and 13.9% were from Bataan. The rest were applicants from Pampanga and the National Capital Region.

He added that male applicants slightly outnumbered the females at 52.2% of the total compared to 47.8%.

The SBMA anniversary job fair was the second to be held virtually by the Subic agency, which launched the innovation in a three-day series last September.

SBMA’s first virtual job fair generated 695 job openings from 16 Subic Bay Freeport locators and 18 other companies for which a total of 2,609 jobseekers applied.

The online job fair is increasingly used for recruitment by companies here to avoid risky face-to-face interaction during the Covid-19 pandemic, Eisma said. ~