Short answer. The employer, not the applicant. Article 68 places primary responsibility for providing appropriate aptitude tests on employers or entities with duly recognised apprenticeship programmes, and where they lack adequate facilities the Department of Labor and Employment performs the service free of charge.
What the law says
employers or entities with duly recognized apprenticeship programs shall have primary responsibility for providing appropriate aptitude tests in the selection of apprentices. If they do not have adequate facilities for the purpose, the Department of Labor and Employment shall perform the service free of charge.
Labor Code, Article 68 — Aptitude Testing Of Applicants. Read the full provision →
Nobody in the article charges the applicant
Follow where the cost lands in each of the two situations the provision describes. Where the employer has the facilities, testing is its primary responsibility as part of selecting apprentices. Where it does not, the Department performs the service free of charge. There is no third arrangement in which the person applying pays for being tested. So a testing fee, an assessment fee or a screening charge collected from applicants has no support in this article, whatever the receipt calls it.
Testing is part of selection, not of training
The tests exist so that the employer can tell who is suited to the trade before an apprenticeship begins, which is why the responsibility sits with the party doing the choosing. It is a cost of running a programme in the same way that interviewing is a cost of hiring. Reading it the other way — as something the applicant buys in order to be considered — turns a selection tool into a revenue stream, which is precisely the arrangement that makes unfilled programmes profitable to advertise.
“Duly recognized” is worth checking first
The obligation is fixed on employers or entities with duly recognized apprenticeship programs, so recognition is the threshold question. Before you spend time or money on an application, ask what programme you are being tested for and whether it is a recognised one, and ask for the answer in a form you can keep. An outfit that cannot say plainly which recognised programme it operates is not in a position to be selecting apprentices at all, and the testing charge is usually not the only irregularity.
If you were charged
Keep the receipt and whatever names the fee, together with the advertisement or message that brought you in and any list of requirements you were given. Note the date, the amount, the office and who took the money. Those are the same documents that matter if the wider arrangement turns out to be irregular, so they are worth holding even if you decide the sum is too small to pursue on its own. Ask about it in writing while you are still in contact with them.