Short of high-quality human resources

In 2010, there is a critical lack of human resources in industrial zones, says Dr Nguyen Phuong Nam, deputy head of the Hanoi Processing and Industrial Zone Management Department. To meet the growing demand of businesses, the department often has to move to other provinces such as Ha Nam, Nam Dinh and Bac Giang to seek personnel, he added.

Previously, foreign businesses mainly recruited female high-school graduates aged 18-35, but now, due to a severe shortage of labour, they agree to accept those who only finished secondary school, Mr. Nam noted.

According to Vu Vinh Phu, former deputy director of the Hanoi Trade Department, there are only about 126 modern-style retail outlets in the city. If Hanoi went ahead with its plan to develop an area of 100,000 sq.m for supermarkets and trade centres each year, it would annually need 6,000 qualified workers. This has become a major log jam for the city leaders, managers and policy-makers.

In addition, the poor English and high-technology skills of Vietnamese labourers, consign most to unskilled labour at a low salary level.      

Lack of professional vocational training centres

According to forecast on the development of high-quality human resources in the 2010-2015 period, such workers will compose only 20-25 percent of Hanoi’s total labour pool. The plan to increase high-quality human resources should be part of Hanoi’s development strategy that aims to strengthen the links among the State, schools and businesses.

Pham Van Dai, deputy director of the Hanoi Department of Education and Training, says a highly-skilled worker should know how to operate modern equipment without supervision, use foreign languages fluently and work professionally.

In fact, Hanoi has not yet had any vocational training centres that could be considered equal to others elsewhere in the region in terms of scale, equipment, staff and training programmes.

Dr Nguyen Phuong Nam proposed that businesses take responsibility to train their workers on the spot to meet their own demand. On the other hand, it’s time to open professional vocational training centres to provide workers with knowledge and experience at college or university level.