In recent years, due to urbanization and other factors, many farmers have lost their land. In the face of this situation, local residents have tended to use their compensation to build houses and buy new possessions rather than put it towards vocational training. This is worrying sign for farmers who have lost their production land as the growth of employment becomes an urgent issue for many households. According to the report by the Department of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, due to the changes in land use, the number of labourers who lose their jobs annually has reached on average of 20,000 people. According to Hai Duong province’s department of Labour, Invalids, and Social Affairs, the province rural population is 1,445 people, accounting for 84.4 percent of its total population. Meanwhile, the area of agricultural land in the province is narrowed each year, leading to a large redundant source of labour in the province, mostly unskilled while the rate of skilled labour reaches only 26.6 percent. Providing vocational training to labourers in rural areas has become an urgent issue in Vietnam.

Deputy director of Hanoi’s Department of Labour, Invalids, and Social Affairs, Xuan Phuong has said that Hanoi has devised measures to organize short-term vocational training courses for labourers in rural areas where the state has taken back agricultural land.

Director of Ha Tay province’s Department of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, Nguyen Ngoc Thach ordered that the province has many traditional craft villages, so labourers have many opportunities to choose their job. Young people tend to choose technical jobs while the middle-aged just like to pursue traditional jobs.

Increasing the quality of vocational training

Otherwise, increasing the quality of vocational training is an urgent matter as it will give rural workers a better chance to seek suitable jobs and increase their incomes.

According to director of the Nghe An provincial Department of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs Ho Tat Thang, to increase the quality of vocational training, it is essential to increase investment for developing local infrastructure and teachers’ capacity, to buy new textbooks, and to improve training programme content. It is also necessary to focus investment on important training programmes in key areas and to avoid scattered investment. For instance, the vocational training programme for farmers in the central province of Nghe An received only around VND2 billion, far less than the proposed requirements for such a training programme.

The northern province of Hai Duong has been offering vocational training for rural workers since 2005, As a result, as many as 20,630 workers have been trained, including 10,400 studying skills relating to the agricultural sector and 10,230 studying skills relating to the industrial and handicraft sectors.

Deputy Minster of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs Huynh Thi Nhan said that the Ministry has implemented a pilot project on organizing vocational training courses for rural workers in various forms, including, short-term courses on traditional crafts, and technical and technological transfer courses. As a result, as many as 300,000 rural workers annually benefit from vocational training projects, most of them young people and social beneficiaries.

So far so good, vocational training has met demands of a large number of rural workers, thus improving their professional and technical skills, generating jobs, as well as boosting poverty reduction and shifting the labour structure in order to reach the set target of reducing the number of agricultural workers by 50 percent by 2010.