Close to a million unskilled workers, farmers, and unemployed laborers can now look forward to new jobs and better livelihood opportunities as the Arroyo administration plans to increase its employment generation programs this year in an effort to reduce hunger and unemployment among Filipinos, the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) said recently.

NAPC Secretary Domingo F. Panganiban said the Arroyo government aims to generate more than 860,000 new jobs for poor and hungry folk through the expansion of its microfinance services, skills training and coconut intercropping programs in more than 50 priority provinces and the National Capital Region (NCR).

"We will concentrate the bulk of our jobs and livelihood generation programs in areas that have the highest levels of hunger and poverty," Panganiban said.

NAPC is the lead monitoring and oversight agency for the government's anti-poverty programs.

Quoting figures from the National Nutrition Council (NNC), Panganiban said the government expects its microfinance and Self-Employment Assistance-Kaunlaran (SEA-K) programs alone to produce some 430,000 jobs for the poor by the end of 2008.

"In addition, we will afford some 332,505 underprivileged folk better livelihood opportunities through the skills and vocational training programs of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) and various other community-based training programs," he said.

He said government will provide additional livelihood and income for a targeted 67,023 coconut farmers through the coconut intercropping program of the Department of Agriculture (DA) while 37,583 workers will be hired for public irrigation and roadside maintenance projects.

A report forwarded by the NNC to NAPC indicates that microfinance services and rural infrastructure projects under the government's anti-hunger campaign have already yielded new jobs for around 881,000 Filipinos.