Technical and vocational skills cannot be replaced by artificial intelligence (AI) to make jobs easier.

Prof. Suresh Kumar Dhameja, director general of the Colombo Plan Staff College (CPSC) at the Department of Education complex in Pasig City, made the remark on the sidelines of the CPSC’s 52nd founding anniversary celebration on 5 December.

“AI cannot replace the skills, basically. It can replace the white-collar jobs, but it cannot replace the blue-collar jobs. And TVET [technical-vocational education and training] is basically the blue-collar jobs,” Dhameja told DAILY TRIBUNE in an interview.

“And if you go to the developed countries, you go to United States, you go to Canada, you go to Japan, Korea–all these countries, you know, the people who are the blue-collar, they are earning much more than the white-collar jobs. That is the power of the skills. So, skills are very important,” he added.

The CPSC, according to him, is helping the Philippine government, particularly the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), to improve the country’s TVET.

“We are trying to impart the skills amongst the TVET, you know, teachers and through them to the TVET students for the benefit of the Philippines government,” Dhameja said.

CPSC, an inter-governmental organization for TVET in the Asia and the Pacific region, was founded in 1973 in Wellington, New Zealand. It was based in Singapore initially from 1974 to 1986 before moving to the Philippines in 1987.

“Since 1987, we have spent a lot of time in the Philippines. And the Philippine government is very supportive to CPSC,” he said.

“They have even enhanced the membership contribution by double very recently. And so, this university celebration is just, you know, taking the legacy forward. So, we are thankful to our member countries, all the diplomatic corps of the member countries for helping us in our journey towards excellence for the TVET region, for the TVET sector in the Asia-Pacific region,” Dhameja said.

Dhameja said the CPSC helps the Philippine government through different programs and projects and even training programs in other countries.

“Like when we conduct the regional training programs, which are conducted in many countries. So, we bring two delegates from the Philippines, in all those conferences and all those regional training programs. When we have the in-country training programs for the member country, we bring around 30 to 35 TVET trainers or teachers from the Philippines in our training programs. Then we do our in-country programs on the virtual mode also, with the help of Labtech International. And then we do a lot of special programs, customized programs, international conferences for the Philippines,” he said

Dhameja also said that CPSC is assisting the Department of Education as tech-voc is getting into the school system of the Philippines.

“We are helping the DepEd in bringing the TVET portion into the curriculum of the schools basically. And our major partner is, of course, TESDA. We are working with TESDA,” he said.

He also said that CPSC has trained more than 4,000 teachers or trainers from TESDA in the last 10 years in their different training programs and projects.

Nelson Manglo, assistant vice president of Toyota Motor Philippines Foundation, congratulated CPSC on their 52nd anniversary.

“We at Toyota Motor Philippines Foundation, including Toyota Motor Philippines School of Technology, celebrate this milestone with you,” Manglo said at the event.

“We hope to strengthen our partnership and we wish you more success in bringing TVET to the next level. More power to CPSC.”

CPSC and Toyota Motor — which specializes on automotive technology — have been partners in capacity building and skills development.

“We’ve been partners for so long. And we need to reach the next level in the Asia-Pacific TVET,” Manglo added.