TO:	The Secretary of Education and Culture The Secretory of Finance The Acting Commissioner of the Budget The Director, Bureau of Higher Education

WHEREAS, it is declared national policy to ensure a continuous stream of technician graduates possessing technical capabilities supportive of national development;

WHEREAS, the national government recognizes the need for providing maximum organizational and budgetary support of this national policy;

WHEREAS, among the projects negotiated under Credit Agreement 349 PH with the World Bank is the establishment of three prototype technician institutes intended to service the technician training program in Luzon, the Visayas, and Mindanao.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, FERDINAND E. MARCOS, President of the Philippines, to promptly ensure the promotion of technician education, do hereby order and direct:

1. The establishment of the prototype state schools under the Bureau of Higher Education of the Department of Education and Culture, as follows:
   1. The Manila Technician Institure, Taguig, Metropolitan Manila;
   2. The Bacolod Technician Institute, Talisay, Negros Occidental
2. The strengthening, upgrading and improvement of the curriculum and other academic activities of the Technical Education Program at Mindanao State University, Iligan Institute of Technology, Iligan City.
3. These schools shall work closely with the Educational Development Projects Implementing Task Force (EDPITAF), which shall approve, at the beginning of each year, programs and projects of the ensuing school year and an evaluation of the immediately preceding school year.
4. In order to allow the prototype state schools established under these Instructions to attract the necessary competent staff members, they are hereby declared critical institutions within the context of Sec 17, P.D. No. 985, the Compensation and Position Classification Decree.
5. The schools, through their respective principals, shall allow and make arrangements for on-the-job-training of their students in private business establishments, offices,shops, factories, warehouses and other facilities based on a joint program developed by the school and the participating private concern, following such criteria, as nay be formulated by EDPITAF.  Cooperating industries or companies must be duly accredited by the Philippine Chamber of Industries in accordance with approved guidelines and standards.
6. Entities assisting the technician schools shall be entitled to a tax credit as a multiple of the amount actually spent for participating in the technician education development project or for undertaking on-the-job-training, on the same basis as companies allowed tax credits on training under the labor law.
7. This Order shall take effect on January 1, 1978.

Done in the City of Manila, this 6th day of January, in the year of Our Lord, nineteen hundred and seventy-eight,