Labour export experienced a difficult time in 2006, especially as the Republic of Korea market was almost frozen. Regardless of the difficulties, the Overseas Labour Cooperation Company (LOD) under the Ministry of Transport made a fruitful working year last year. Radio the Voice of Vietnam (VOV) reporter talked to LOD general director, Vu Cong Binh.
VOV: What is your assessment on the role of labour export to the country’s economy as well as Vietnamese labourers’ skills?
Mr Binh: Labour export has been playing an important role in the country’s economy, particularly after Vietnam joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO). There will be an influx of foreign investment into the country, together with increasing trade activities. This requires a huge human resource. Through labour export, Vietnamese workers will be trained and updated with new working skills. They will play an active role in the production industry.
In addition, every year labour export yields the country around US$2 billion in hard currency – a relatively large amount of money in the context of Vietnam’s monetary difficulty.
Regarding labour export, Vietnam achieved encouraging results in the past year. The country sent nearly 80,000 labourers to work abroad. The country targeted to send between 80,000 and 85,000 Vietnamese labourers abroad this year. Vietnamese labourers are praised for their intelligence. However, they face trouble with foreign languages, sense of discipline and health. Therefore, enhancing labourers’ capacity is becoming a key measure to raise workers’ value as well as their income. I think if each labour export company builds a good reputation in the eye of foreign employers, labourers will benefit the most.
VOV: To improve labourers’ quality to earn more hard currency for the country, what will the company do in terms of training and exporting?
Mr Binh: We have well realized that from now till 2010 and the coming years, developed countries are still in dire need of trained labourers. Therefore, we focus on training and improving labourers’ working skills to raise their value so that labourers can meet demand from foreign markets and earn a higher income.
The Government has built a strategy on training and labour export, however, projects are still going slowly. It is important to have thorough and systematic research with a focus on subject training and scale of training.
For enterprises, they have cooperated to increase investment in training, but the scope is limited.
VOV: Could you review LOD’s operation in the past year and plans for this year?
Mr Binh: 2006 marked a milestone for the company as it turned into an equitised company. This has helped the company better manage the company’s operation. In the past year, LOD sent more than 2,500 workers abroad, including 1,000 workers to Malaysia, 800 to the Republic of Korea, 200 to Japan and 300 to Taiwan.
As Vietnam is deeply integrating into the world economy, LOD considers the quality of labour export to be the key to securing a reputable trademark. Therefore, in 2007 the company plans to put special investment into human resources, both labourers and company’s staff, so as to achieve a target of sending between 2,500 and 3,000 labourers to work overseas.
VOV: Thank you very much.
