Expanding population requires smart solutions to unemployment

22:44' 22/04/2008 (GMT+7)
VietNamNet Bridge – It is forecast that Vietnam’s population will reach around 89mil by 2010, creating a huge demand for new jobs. Thoi Bao Kinh te Viet Nam (Vietnam Economic Times) spoke to several experts about the issue.
* Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, Minister of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs:
In order to reach the target of creating jobs for 1.7mil workers this year, the labour sector should implement various solutions. The first one involves improving and updating labour law. The ministry will also sponsor labour consultancy activities and development of job market information from job agencies.
The sector will also apply stricter regulations on labour safety by more frequently checking equipment and machines at enterprises and increasing fines for breaches of labour law.
The sector will ask authorities and enterprises to provide sufficient forecasts on labour demands up to 2010.
The labour sector will co-ordinate with the Social Policy Bank and other concerned agencies to solve problems in drafting and examining projects to distribute national fund for jobs creation more quickly.
We intend to focus more on projects that create many jobs, and encourage handicraft villages and small enterprises to expand. This year, the sector will build two job agencies in the north and central region. The same agency will be built next year in the south.
In addition, the job transaction centre model will be used more, and job-search programmes will be promoted more in the countryside and remote mountainous areas.
* Do Thi Xuan Phuong, deputy director of Hanoi’s Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs Department:
Labour export has been considered as an important part of solving unemployment in the city. There are 70 enterprises specialising in exporting labour in Hanoi. But during the past few years, not many labourers in the city have taken part in labour export. That’s why this year, the city will promote labour export programmes among the local community.
Experts in the field suggested that city authorities should build more training centres for labour export to meet the increasing demand of labour export enterprises.
Last year, the city created nearly 80,000 new jobs, reducing the unemployment rate to below 6%. Among the new jobs, the service sector featured prominently, offering most of the positions.
This year, increasing the labour quality to offer more skilled labourers is the most important task of the local labour sector. The city will try to reduce the unemployment rate to 5.7%.
* Nguyen Xuan Vui, general director of Airseco (Airlines Service and Trading Joint-Stock Company):
Labour export has brought many jobs to labourers in areas that are undergoing changing land-use, or for young men finishing military duty. Labour export has also offered labourers the chance to be trained and to practise abroad.
Vietnamese who work overseas send home around US$1.6bil each year.
Foreign employers have noted that Vietnamese workers are clever, agile and eager to learn. Yet they face various challenges, such as stiff competition from workers from other countries and Vietnamese workers’ limited capacity for foreign languages.
Exporting labour is a sensitive field and requires enterprises with established trademarks to join in with work in this area.
In my opinion we should classify enterprises in the labour export sector according to their performance.
We can tally the number of labourers sent abroad by an enterprise to check the company’s effectiveness. However, other factors are also important like the rate of labourers who have to return home earlier than stipulated by contracts; the rate of labourers that have accidents and the way enterprises solve problems associated with working abroad.
If the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs gives strict guidance and enterprises make plans and invest in training, we will raise labour export to a new level during the next few years - that is sending highly-skilled technical labourers who can meet growing global demand.