Summer jobs under the government program are not just for students but for out-of-school youth, according to Senator Juan Edgardo Angara.
Angara is encouraging out-of-school youth to take advantage of the new law that included them among the beneficiaries of the government’s Special Program for the Employment of Students (SPES).
The program provided under Republic act 10917 provides short-term job opportunities to help the out-of-school youth pursue and continue their education.
RA 10917 aims to strengthen the government’s employment program for students to include not only poor but deserving students, but also out-of-school youth, dependents of displaced workers, and would-be displaced workers due to business closures or work stoppages, or natural calamities, who intend to enroll in any secondary, tertiary or technical-vocational institutions.
The SPES was instituted in 1992 under RA 7323, and was amended by RA 9547 in 2009. It aims to help poor but deserving students in pursuing their education by encouraging establishments and government agencies to employ them during summer and Christmas vacations.
“To strengthen the program, the new law mandates that out-of-school youth and those enrolled in the tertiary, vocational or technical education may be employed at any time of the year. High school students, on the other hand, shall be employed only during summer and/or Christmas vacations,” said Angara who sponsored the new SPES law that was enacted in August last year.
Angara, vice chairman of the Senate labor committee, explained that RA 10917 further raised the age limit of the program’s beneficiaries from 15 to 25 years old to 15 to 30 years old, and extended the SPES employment period from 52 days to 78 days or three months.
To qualify, the combined net income of the beneficiary’s parents, including his/her own income, if any, should not exceed the latest annual regional poverty threshold level for a family of six.