People with disabilities should be more active in searching for suitable jobs while enterprises need to improve their working conditions to make the most of the ability of disabled workers, according to social affairs officials in Ho Chi Minh City.

Tran Thi Doan from the HCM City Support Centre for Vocational Training and Job Placement for People with Disabilities said in 2014, local enterprises offered more than 3,000 job vacancies for disabled workers at her centre, but only 700 disabled people applied for jobs.

Le Chu Giang, Director of the social welfare section under the municipal Department of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, said besides support policies, disabled persons should equip themselves with necessary working and social skills in order to find and maintain a suitable job.

Pham Thi Thanh Thuy, an employee with mobility impairment at the Vietnam Institute of Computer, shared her own experience, saying that disabled people should prove their ability to employers, and all jobs demand diligence, constant learning and skills.

Director of the Vietnam Institute of Computer Nguyen Thanh Dai said among the company’s 25 employees, five are persons with disabilities. He added that all employees are treated equally based on the efficiency of their performance.

Tran Thi Doan from the HCM City Support Centre for Vocational Training and Job Placement for People with Disabilities proposed more investment in vocational training for the disabled, explaining that most employers reported they had to re-train newly recruited workers even though the workers have graduated training courses at vocational centres.

According to Le Chu Giang, the city has been implementing a project on providing assistance to local disabled people in the period from 2014-2020, which has set the target of giving vocational training and jobs to 5,000 people with disabilities by 2020.

The project is expected to raise public awareness of the importance of caring for the disabled, as well as to call for the social involvement in the field.

At present, there are some 6.7 million disabled people in Vietnam, 60 percent of who are of working age.
In 2013, about 80,000 disabled people gained vocational skills in jobs suitable for their health, such as spa services, animal husbandry, mushroom cultivation, carpentry, and making clothes and bamboo products.

According to the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs’ General Department of Vocational Training, around 1.5 million people in Vietnam are taught with vocational skills every year.-VNA