MT Training Scholarship Increases Work Pool of the MT Sector

The ongoing MT Training Scholarship dubbed as PGMA–TWSP (Training for Work Scholarship Program) is actually a P350 Million pesos scholarship grant from the Office of the President of the Republic of the Philippines. It is a continuing scholarship program which the national government started last 2007 geared towards curtailing the shortage of talent pool for various technical occupations including medical transcription.

The Technical Education Skills Development Authority (TESDA) supervises the implementation of this scholarship program with the help of sectoral or industry associations or organizations.

PGMA-TWSP for 2008 has allocated MTIAPI around P 30 million-worth of training vouchers to train individuals for Finishing Course for Medical Transcription. Each qualified scholar was given a voucher amounting to P10,000.00 making the scholar eligible for comprehensive MT training at TESDA accredited MT educational institutions or at TESDA accredited MTSO with in-house training services.

The Business Process Association of the Philippines (BPAP) was authorized by TESDA to distribute and monitor the scholarship coupons in the ICT sector. MTIAPI was given a total of 2,744 coupons for 2008 which the association was able to successfully distribute among the different MTIAPI member and non-member companies and training institutions all over the Philippines. MTIAPI has appointed Ms. Belinda Reyes of eData Services Philippines, Inc. as the chairperson of the PGMA-TWSP scholarship project.

She handles the distribution, monitoring and evaluation of every scholarship coupon for medical transcription.

To date, most of the 2008 recipients of the scholarship program had finished training and a high percentage of them are now employed and working as MT practitioners. A few who started training in the last weeks of 2008 had to carry over and extend their training until the first quarter of this year 2009.

MTIAPI is affirmative that the PGMA-TWSP really helps in increasing the MT workforce. Seeing its positive impact to the MT industry, TESDA has decided to extend the program this year, not only for the MT sector but also for other business process outsourcing industry like call center, animation, and software development sectors. BPAP and TESDA are still on the process of creating a memorandum of agreement for the allocation of the 2009 vouchers. The vouchers, hopefully, will be released in the first quarter of 2009. For anyone interested with this project, please login at www.mtiapi.com for more information.