PH joins APEC initiative to develop skills of logistics professionals

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ID-100274267Australia is working with the Philippines, China, Indonesia and Vietnam to develop regional occupational standards for core skills in the transport and logistics industry within the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) community.

Australia’s Transport and Logistics Industry Skills Council (TLISC) and Department of Education and Training are collaborating with representatives from the four countries on setting regional standards for core transport and logistics skills.

TLISC, in its latest update, said it made visits to the participating economies to observe progress against the project work plan and understand their transport and logistics industry through speaking with industry representatives and site visits.

Earlier, a workshop by the participating economies was held in Australia in November last year to discuss establishing shared understanding of skills standards in the transport and logistics industry and developing a template for the final framework.

By agreement, each country is to prepare the initial draft of standards for their selected occupation. The occupations are warehouse operator, logistics administrative officer, freight forwarder, warehouse supervisor, and supply chain manager.

TLISC’s part in the ongoing project is to provide guidance on engaging the industry’s help in developing and validating the skills standards.

TLISC said the country meetings provided “a valuable opportunity to share not only progress against the project work plan, but also to discuss training and skills related issues more broadly as they applied to the transport and logistics industry.”

It noted a range of recurring themes across all economies, including industry concerns about the quality of graduates being produced by both vocational and educational training centers and higher education systems.

“There were many discussions relating to graduates not meeting industry performance standards which has the potential to reduce graduate value to employers owing to cost/time to retrain coupled with graduate expectation of higher wages (than less qualified workers),” TLISC said.

Discussed too were mechanisms to better match future industry demand to the supply of skills delivered by education systems, it added.

Also touched on were the consequences of robotics, automation, and other technological advances on the future transport and logistics workforce, and how to support to workers with the lowest skill base so they can adapt to future job demands of increasingly globalized supply chains.

Options and opportunities for the ongoing professional development of the transport and logistics trainer/teacher workforce, including ensuring their sufficient exposure to modern industry conditions, were also tackled during the visits.

“Work is now continuing in collaboration with the participating economies, including Government and industry representatives, to finalise the occupational standards aligned to the core skills for each of the five identified job roles,” TLSIC said.

Once an agreement is reached, a final workshop will be held in Manila to validate the results and discuss an implementation strategy across the region. – Roumina Pablo

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