Millions of rural workers offered vocational training

Of the trainees, about 115,300 disadvantaged people are either poor or disabled, social policy beneficiaries and those belonging to ethnic minority groups.

Duong Duc Lan, Deputy Head of the Vocational Training Department under the Ministry of Lanour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA), says that priority will be given to improving vocational training and generating jobs for rural workers. By 2015, about 70% of local trainees will be employed, and about 1.8 million rural workers are expected to pass vocational exams of national standards, he adds.

The VND6,959-billion programme will focus on building vocational training models in districts, compiling textbooks and documents, improving teaching tools and facilities, and raising the capacity of vocational trainers and managers.

MoLISA Deputy Minister Nguyen Thanh Hoa, who is also Head of the national target programme, emphasizes the need to boost information dissemination and consultancy among rural workers. It is essential to build district-level vocational training centres and merge small-scale vocational training units into bigger ones to operate more efficiently, he suggests.

Le Quang Trung, Deputy Head of the MoLISA’s Employment Department, says he is optimistic about the effective implementation of the programme as around 10,000 students have already graduated from vocational training colleges and nearly 8,000 trainers at current vocational training centres have met requirements for professional skill standards.

By July 2013, there were as many as 1,375 vocational training units operating with more than 11,000 official and over 8,000 unofficial trainers. More than 11,200 lecturers are also invited from universities and colleges to train at these units.

Over the past two years, over 10,000 rural workers have been trained. Most local officers and managers in charge of labour, invalids and social affairs have also been trained.

The State budget will allocate VND5,779 billion for the 2013-2015 national target programme on employment and vocational training, while the remaining amount of VND1,180 billion will be mobilized from local budgets, international aid, and other social capital sources.