Ofelia Domingo, Assistant Regional Director of the Department of Labor in the Davao region, said the event will be done along with the 10th Davao Trade and Expo on October 23-25 at the Davao Trade and Convention Center spearheaded by the Davao City Chamber of Commerce and Industry Incorporated.

She said some 10,000 jobs could be offered by the invited companies representing service and construction industries.

The labor department is also planning to invite two agencies looking to hire workers for Canada as the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency is also awaiting job orders to determine the vacancies and number of people needed there.

Antonio dela Cruz, Vice-President for Trade and Commerce of the chamber, said their members might also field in human resources personnel to the event to hire people.

The chamber has 400 total members though the businessman could not ascertain how many exactly are joining.

Ad Roel Alcober, ABS-CBN Davao News Chief, said they decided to combine their jobs fair originally slated on October 25 with the chamber and the labor department to gather more companies under one roof.

ABS-CBN is the media partner of the event and Alcober said the undertaking is part of the company’s corporate social responsibility dubbed as Lingkod Kapamilya: Trabaho Patrol.

Domingo, in an earlier interview, said unemployment and underemployment rate in Davao region will likely increase in the remaining months of the year, with in-migration likely to rise particular from the conflict-affected regions in Central Mindanao.

She said the current unemployment rate is 6.3 percent or 112,644 people of the 1.8 million workers as of April, which is still lower than the national unemployment rate of eight percent.

Domingo said they invited 70 companies hiring employees in industries like service and construction among others with job targets that could reach to 10,000.(Rizalene P. Acac)