Engr. Wesley D. Tan, officer-in-charge, DOLE-Isabela City Field Office said that aside from providing training and enhancing the capabilities of the informal sectors to help improve their livelihood, the agency also stresses on the value of work safety and health as key to better life.
“We saw it important for the informal sector to acquire basic knowledge and skills with regard to health and safety at work because injuries and accidents could happen while performing their jobs. And this could be prevented if we practice safety at work,” Tan said.
He said that injuries have great impact on the economy of the family as these may cause the worker to stop working for a while, or worst permanently.
DOLE provides assistance to informal sectors by giving out Kabuhayan starter kits for small entrepreneurs who lack the needed facilities, equipment, tools, and paraphernalia to start or improve their business. Under the program, DOLE makes sure that beneficiaries also practice safety at work and observe healthy lifestyle in the performance of their job, especially those in the food business.
Appreciation course on good housekeeping, unsafe acts and unsafe health conditions, basic and simple records keeping were given during the one-day learning session. Representative from the Social Security System (SSS) was also present to provide orientation on SSS services to the informal economy.
“We hope to be able to inculcate in the consciousness of the informal sector to practice discipline especially in the 3S of the good housekeeping, such as Sort, Segregate, Systematic with the end goal of increasing their productivity no matter how small is their business,” Tan said.
DOLE hopes to bring into the consciousness of informal sectors about recording transactions made, and that small vendors will learn to document their transactions by doing simple record and bookkeeping to keep track of the development and improvement of their business.
When asked about streamlining the informal sectors, Tan said that this is the direction of the government for informal sectors and elevate them somehow to a micro and small enterprise where they are already registered as a business sector.
Tan said that DOLE is helping the sector to graduate from an informal sector to a micro enterprise by improving their capability and productivity which will eventually improve their income.
“When this happens, they will begin to expand their business, hire people which will make it into a micro enterprise where there is already employer-employee relationship and other legal requirements,” he said.