As many as 300,000 job seekers are expected to get employed or self-employed this year with support of the State-funded job-promotion fund while 85,000 others will be sent abroad on labour contracts.

The targets are part of a national employment programme for 2010, which was announced by the Ministry of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA) at a conference in the central city of Da Nang on March 9.

Deputy Minister Nguyen Thanh Hoa said MOLISA was working with relevant public agencies and mass organisations in allocating disbursements from the fund to target people, focusing on those from rural areas and ethnic minorities.

Investments will be spent on upgrading the network of job placement centres nationwide with priorities to be given to 48 pilot centres under the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union, she added.

More businesses will be licensed for providing this service while job orientation and vocational training centres are also subject to the Government investment.

MOLISA plans to open job transaction sessions in 44 cities and provinces, including one on the national scale, and launch a database on the domestic labour market soon.

In 2006-09, some 6.5 million job seekers were slotted into jobs, representing 81.2 percent of the target set for the 2006-10 period. Of the figures, some 1.2 million jobs came from the National Fund for Job Promotion and almost 323,000 others were sent abroad on labour contracts.--Enditem