Tran Anh Tuan, deputy director of Ho Chi Minh City's Centre for HumanResource Forecasts and Labour Information, spoke to Phu nu Viet Nam(Vietnamese Women) newspaper about employment this year.
* In your opinion, what were the difficulties facing the labour market, particularly for female workers, in 2013?
In the context of economic slowdown, many Vietnamese enterprises wentbankrupt, while the remainder had to restructure their operations.
The labour market is now developing along the lines of cutting staffand giving priority to high-quality talent with strong skills, includingmanagement skills for those filling senior management positions.
Some recent surveys showed that the percentage of female employers inour country is much lower than that of their male peers. The majority offemale employees are working under special circumstances: They can onlywork at seasonal jobs with long working hours; low pay; and many risks,especially for jobs in travel, catering, or small trade services.
In 2013, many enterprises refused to accept female workers, or theydismissed female workers who were pregnant or who had infants to lookafter.
Some enterprises even came up with aridiculous requirement for their labour contracts, forcing employees topromise not to have a baby within the first two years of the contract.
* Don't you think such problems will occur in 2014 as well?
It has been projected that in 2014, there will be 265,000 vacantpositions in Ho Chi Minh City, of which 130,000 of them will be newpositions.
In our country, although we have numerous women employees, only a small percentage of them have received training.
That's the key factor preventing them from getting good positions,while the country is on the path of modernisation, industrialisation,and international integration.
It has been forecastthat 2014 will remain a difficult year for our economy. So, femaleworkers will continue to face many challenges. However, Vietnam isexperiencing many changes, and of course, these changes will create manyopportunities for job seekers, particularly in small and mediumenterprises. And if women know how to seize these opportunities, theywill be winners.
Vietnam has set a target to haveabout 30 percent of employers' roles filled by women by 2015, and 35percent by 2017. These targets are an indication that the governmentwants to have more women joining the labour force.
* What about employment for disadvantaged women?
At present, some 35,000-40,000 poor women living in Ho Chi Minh Cityare desperate to find jobs. Most of them are disadvantaged women, andthey can only work at seasonal and/or low-paid jobs. Since they wereborn into poor families, they didn't have the opportunity to get aproper education. This is a disadvantage when it comes to traininghigh-quality talent for a developing nation like Vietnam.
In 2014, the seasonal employment tendency will be popular among manyenterprises in Ho Chi Minh City. So, this is an advantage for manywomen. With diverse employment positions opening in food processingplants, packaging paper enterprises, aqua product processing enterprisesand so on, disadvantaged women will have a wider choice of jobs thatsuit their availability, capacity, and expertise.
* What measures should we adopt to generate more jobs for female workers in the future?
The measures must be comprehensive. The first measure is to developdifferent vocational methods of providing different types of vocationaltraining, including short and long-term courses.
The next measure is to create a link between enterprises and vocationaltraining centres as well as enforce the Law on Gender.
Employment service centres affiliated with the City Women's Unionshould further enhance their role by helping women to find employment orintroducing them to vocational training centres.
In addition, the centres should conduct regular surveys to find out whatthe disadvantaged women need, so they can help them more effectively.-VNA
* In your opinion, what were the difficulties facing the labour market, particularly for female workers, in 2013?
In the context of economic slowdown, many Vietnamese enterprises wentbankrupt, while the remainder had to restructure their operations.
The labour market is now developing along the lines of cutting staffand giving priority to high-quality talent with strong skills, includingmanagement skills for those filling senior management positions.
Some recent surveys showed that the percentage of female employers inour country is much lower than that of their male peers. The majority offemale employees are working under special circumstances: They can onlywork at seasonal jobs with long working hours; low pay; and many risks,especially for jobs in travel, catering, or small trade services.
In 2013, many enterprises refused to accept female workers, or theydismissed female workers who were pregnant or who had infants to lookafter.
Some enterprises even came up with aridiculous requirement for their labour contracts, forcing employees topromise not to have a baby within the first two years of the contract.
* Don't you think such problems will occur in 2014 as well?
It has been projected that in 2014, there will be 265,000 vacantpositions in Ho Chi Minh City, of which 130,000 of them will be newpositions.
In our country, although we have numerous women employees, only a small percentage of them have received training.
That's the key factor preventing them from getting good positions,while the country is on the path of modernisation, industrialisation,and international integration.
It has been forecastthat 2014 will remain a difficult year for our economy. So, femaleworkers will continue to face many challenges. However, Vietnam isexperiencing many changes, and of course, these changes will create manyopportunities for job seekers, particularly in small and mediumenterprises. And if women know how to seize these opportunities, theywill be winners.
Vietnam has set a target to haveabout 30 percent of employers' roles filled by women by 2015, and 35percent by 2017. These targets are an indication that the governmentwants to have more women joining the labour force.
* What about employment for disadvantaged women?
At present, some 35,000-40,000 poor women living in Ho Chi Minh Cityare desperate to find jobs. Most of them are disadvantaged women, andthey can only work at seasonal and/or low-paid jobs. Since they wereborn into poor families, they didn't have the opportunity to get aproper education. This is a disadvantage when it comes to traininghigh-quality talent for a developing nation like Vietnam.
In 2014, the seasonal employment tendency will be popular among manyenterprises in Ho Chi Minh City. So, this is an advantage for manywomen. With diverse employment positions opening in food processingplants, packaging paper enterprises, aqua product processing enterprisesand so on, disadvantaged women will have a wider choice of jobs thatsuit their availability, capacity, and expertise.
* What measures should we adopt to generate more jobs for female workers in the future?
The measures must be comprehensive. The first measure is to developdifferent vocational methods of providing different types of vocationaltraining, including short and long-term courses.
The next measure is to create a link between enterprises and vocationaltraining centres as well as enforce the Law on Gender.
Employment service centres affiliated with the City Women's Unionshould further enhance their role by helping women to find employment orintroducing them to vocational training centres.
In addition, the centres should conduct regular surveys to find out whatthe disadvantaged women need, so they can help them more effectively.-VNA
