The Central Highlands province of Dak Lak is stepping up vocational training for rural youth with an aim of creating jobs for some 28,000 people a year from now to 2020, said Vice Chairwoman of the provincial People’s Committee Mai Hoan Nie Kdam.

Dak Lak is striving to increase the proportion of trained labourers to 50 percent in 2015 and 57 percent in 2020, she said.

To that end, it will expand vocational training to serve the industrialisation, modernisation, and agricultural and rural development such as those relating to information technology, agricultural and forestry production and processing, tourism, and handicrafts.

Between 2016 and 2020, provincial authorities will encourage economic sectors to set up 60 vocational training establishments so as to equip 30,000 people in rural areas with job skills every year, the Vice Chairwoman noted.

She added at the same time, local colleges will also get help to improve their training quality to national and ASEAN levels and open courses in accordance with the market demand.

The province in the past years has also been paying heed to raising the teaching staff’s capacity, surveying labour demand and supply, and organising job fairs, the official said.

In 2014, about 26,500 people in Dak Lak became employed, adding up the number of those getting jobs since 2011 to 103,390, mostly the young in rural areas, with 43 percent of them under training.

Covering more than 13,000 sq.km of land in the heart of the Central Highlands, Dak Lak is home to approximately 1.8 million residents. Over 1.3 million people live in rural areas, and more than 30 percent of the population being ethnics.-VNA