Vietnam has an abundant young labour force, but still fails to meet businesses’ requirements for skilled workers. It is essential to improve labourers’ professional skills in order to increase competitiveness of enterprises and attract more foreign investment.

The number of skilled workers is still limited, and most employees are non-professionals. Recent statistics of the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA) showed that the number of workers only having short-term vocational training certificates accounts for more than 14 percent of total working age labour force, while the number of skilled workers represents the same proportion.

According to the Vietnam HR 2B labour service company, over the past six months, the demand for high-quality labour increased by more than 50 percent, including personnel managers, consultative experts, engineers and skilled workers. However, the supply of high-quality labourers only met a part of the demand. Vietnam’s admission to the World Trade Organization (WTO) is of great significance, bringing more opportunities to lure more foreign investment and generate more jobs. Nevertheless, with such low rate of skilled workers at present, it is not easy for Vietnamese people to grasp the opportunities to get jobs.

Nguyen Dai Dong, head of the Labour and Employment Department under the MoLISA, said the greatest challenge for Vietnamese workers is that more than 80 percent of them are living in rural areas. Therefore, it is essential to improve their professional skills and working style in order to meet requirements in the integration process.

In addition, there is a severe shortage of skilled workers in the field of high-technology, especially information technology (IT). According to domestic software companies, the current development and IT training activities have not yet met requirements for the rapid growth of the domestic IT sector.

At present, the key labour force to develop the IT sector consists of students studying at universities and colleges. However, these students have little chance to practice and do not have access to new technology, so they often find it difficult when they start to work in companies. It takes more time for them to adapt to their work.

Director of the Hanoi-based Vietsoftware affiliated company Tran Viet Trung said with the current IT development, it is important for IT programmers to be to date with new information and knowledge. Hoever, textbooks of many domestic universities are out of date, thus failing to meet requirements of reality. As a result, many new graduates have to take further training courses when they are recruited to work in companies. This takes a long time and makes for high expenditure for enterprises.

Sharing Mr Trung’s viewpoint, Director of the Phu Thai Ltd. Co Pham Dinh Toan, said that intellectuals and skilled workers are both lacking and redundant. Vietnam has paid too much attention to increasing the number of universities and recruiting a large number of students, while the quality of training activities has not received proper attention. Most universities have tried to provide practical training activities but still fail to fulfill requirements for development. Universities should cooperate with large businesses and put their students on probation in businesses to help them improve their professional skills, he said.

It is necessary to socialize labour training work and encourage all economic sectors to take part in vocational training programmes. To do this, it is essential to have detailed policies to attract businesses and allow localities to make decisions on the form of training in line with their real conditions.

Truong Ngoc Ly, Director of the Lam Dong provincial Department for Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, said if we want to increase the quality of labourers, we have to invest more in State-owned vocational training centers. At present, most investment from non-State sectors is poured in short-term vocational training. Hence, the State should play a key role in long-term vocational training to increase the quality of the workforce.

From now to 2010, about VND7,000 billion from the State budget will be allocated for vocational training activities. With the fund, vocational training activities will be improved towards practicality.  Vocational training programmes will also be built in accordance with those of international countries with the aim of increasing the quality of human resources to meet requirements of the labour market and the international integration process.