5.66 Billion of PGSP Subsidy in 2009 Up for Grabs for Davaoeños

Since 2006 the government has aggressively pursued the goal of 1 Million jobs by 2010 through the Training for Work Scholarship Program (TWSP). For the year 2009, a total of 809,800 scholarship slots are up for grabs under the PGSP or the Pangulong Gloria Scholarship Program administered by the Technical Educational Skills and Development Authority (TESDA). The announcement was made by Regional Director Elmer K. Talavera during a meeting with technical vocational schools last February 9, 2009 at the Korea-Philippines Training Center in Buhisan, Tibungco, Davao City.

RD Talavera also mentioned that Davao del Sur including Davao City will be awarding a total of 14,000 scholarships. "The scholar is also given a daily allowance of P60 to cover for transportation and food while in attendance to the program," Talavera said.

Included in the TESDA list of programs which can qualify under the PGSP program is the Finishing Course in Medical Transcription NCII (160 hours) and Finishing Course in Legal Transcription NCII (160 hours). Since 2006, MTC Academy, a transcription training provider has accepted to its transcription training program over 100 TESDA scholars. The visually impaired (VIs) are among the recipients of the scholarship and several graduates are now working with local transcription companies in Davao City.

The IT-BPO industry in Davao City through its prime mover, ICT Davao Inc. welcomes the PGSP implementation as it gears up to encourage broad participation for BPO careers which is seen to grow by 35% in 2008. BPO employment is expected to contribute positively to improving the quality of life among Davaoenos as more ICT and IT-BPO investments is expected to flow into the City especially after the highly successful participation in the e-Services, an annual ICT event, where the Davao delegation sat in numerous business matching meetings.

Be an accomplished Business Transcriber or Virtual Secretary in 3 weeks

Every company that is registered with the stock market has to stick to the condition of conducting quarterly meetings of their businesses thereby updating their investors on their level of business performance. As these meetings move ahead, a coordinator has to capture the meeting, store it in the form of an audio file, and get it converted to text by a transcriptionist. The transcriptionist listens to the audio file, modifies it to text and sends it back to the customer in text format.

Business transcription is all about transforming a recorded audio file into a verbatim transcript for companies across industrial domains. Global business owners want to focus their energies on their primary business and not on routine tasks of documenting, filing, mailing correspondences and other forms of administrative work. The demand for low cost administrative assistance by many start-up companies looking to save on overhead has evolved the business transcription service to expand and now include virtual secretarial duties (aka virtual assistants-VA) as they increasingly serve to fulfill other office administrative duties without the need for a physical presence in the employer’s home country.

With the availability of high-speed satellite links, it is now entirely possible to provide this service from the Philippines to a client-employer across the globe. The best part about a career in business transcription is that the training required to become a competent BT or VA takes only 3 weeks provided the student-applicant possess basic entry-level skills to gain admission into MTC’s General Transcription 1 (GT1) program. But even without the basic entry level skill, pre-requisite courses that include touch typing, computer operations, listening for accents, English proficiency and familiarity with transcription technology are now available.

Start your Medical Transcription Career NOW with MTC’s 16-week Program

Davao City’s transcription companies continue to enjoy increasing demand for medical transcriptions from global clients and transcription partners for data documentation and audio files conversion despite the US recession. In the last 4 months of 2008, MTC Academy in Davao City has received a succession of requests from its local partners for trained transcribers from its roster of graduates to fill the manpower requirements of transcription companies ramping up their production to meet increasing demand.

The more adept MTC students found themselves hired even before graduation from MT programs. An increasing number of graduates also found themselves hired within 1-2 weeks from graduation. Others have passed employer interviews and are simply completing their on-the-job training prior to be able to start work. This employment trend is projected to continue through 2009 as the demand for medical transcription increase and MTs begin to multi-task as a business or legal transcriptionists.

To meet this surge for human resource, MTC Academy at E. Quirino Avenue (082-222682) has given much effort to curriculum innovation and is set to launch program tracks that build transcription skills at the intermediate and advance levels for General, Legal and Medical transcriptions. The tracks are so designed to enable a beginner-student to primarily build basic skill sets such a keyboarding, computer operations, listening for accents, English proficiency and familiarity with transcription technology at the BASIC or pre-requisite level prior to gaining entry to the intermediate or advance levels.

Using the revolving curriculum for most of its programs allowing classes to start every month, MTC Academy has also restructured its MT program costs thus enhancing the value for money for all of its courses. This innovation has brought about a reduction in tuition fees ranging from 30-40% it medical transcription program.

8 week-Legal Transcription program now available at MTC Academy-Davao City

The demand for qualified individuals to take on the task of writing accurate and grammatically correct legal records has been growing. These individuals are known as legal transcriptionist/transcribers. Legal transcribers take some of the workload from lawyers and paralegals needing to keep accurate records but do not have the time to construct them. This profession is rising in importance as the need for accurate documentation and organized legal system increases. Data capture and transcriptions in the legal world is critical as it affects the speed by which justice is served.

Just like medical and business transcriptions, legal transcription uses the latest technology to convert legal dictations such as oral arguments, trial cases, court hearings and proceedings and legal interviews from voice to text thus creating official documents. The Legal Transcription program at MTC Academy is an eight (8) week program with a pre-requisite course of 1- 4 weeks depending on the student-applicants’ entry-level skill set. The program covers the essentials of legal terminology, types of legal documentation, professional ethics in legal transcription and common rules in legal documentation.

Using the revolving curriculum for most of its programs allowing classes to start every month, MTC Academy has also restructured its program costs thus enhancing the value for money for all of its courses with low down payment and easy monthly installments extended to all qualified applicants.

Supplying more than 50% of Davao City’s manpower requirement to its corporate partners, MTC Academy located at E.Quirino Avenue corner Gen Luna St. (082-2226822) continues to fill up vacancies for transcribers by providing FREE job placement assistance for its transcription graduates to companies here in Davao and as far as Manila and Cebu.

MTC Introduces New, More Affordable Transcription Programs in 2009

Many large business owners today have a global view of the outsourced transcription industry and generally do not pose objections to getting the job done outside of country borders as long as it gets done on time and work is consistently accurate.

The good news is, the increasing demand for transcribers is now not just limited to medical but also now include legal and general/business transcriptions. The demand for qualified transcribers has continued its upswing trend and Davao City operators have continued to experience to date some degree of shortage of qualified and trained transcribers in the areas of medical and legal transcriptions.

MTC Academy’s desire to provide more value has given rise to a curriculum innovation that now includes program tracks in building transcription skills at the intermediate and advanced levels for General, Legal and Medical transcriptions. The tracks are so designed to enable a beginner-student to primarily build basic skill sets such a keyboarding, computer operations, listening for accents, English proficiency and familiarity with transcription technology at the BASIC or pre-requisite level.

For flexibility, the MTC curriculum allows students (college graduates or undergraduates from any course background) possessing basic skills to get an exemption from some pre-requisite courses and move forward to enrolling in any of the 3 main transcription tracks General Transcriptions 1(GT1), Legal Transcriptions 1 (LT1) or Medical Transcriptions 1 (MT1). To further season the transcription-trainee, MTC encourages its students to complete the advance programs of GT2, LT2 or MT2.

Using the revolving curriculum for most of its programs allowing classes to start every month, MTC Academy has also restructured its program costs thus enhancing the value for money for all of its courses. This innovation has brought about a reduction in tuition fees ranging from 30-50% for all of its 2009 programs.

Supplying more than 50% of Davao City’s manpower requirement to its corporate partners, MTC Academy located at E.Quirino Avenue corner Gen Luna St. (082-2226822) continues to fill up vacancies for transcribers by providing job placement assistance for its transcription graduates to companies here in Davao and as far as Manila and Cebu.