Thousands of unemployed people across the country are going to receive more financial assistance to attend training courses in order to improve their chances of finding work.

The move is part of an amended decree that replaces the current unemployment benefit of 300,000 VND (14 USD) per month in a bid to help people become self-reliant.

Vu Trung Chinh, director of the Hanoi Employment Introduction Centre, said that changes to the decree are necessary to help people find jobs.

Specific levels of financial assistance for different types of training courses over the course of six months would be various and changeable, and decided by the Ministry of Finance, he said.

The benefits of this move will far eclipse simply handing over 300,000 VND (14 USD) each month, he said.

More than 800,000 people in Vietnam receive unemployment benefits, but only 4,000 have registered for assistance to go on training courses, so more financial incentives are needed to attract people to the scheme.

Chinh explained that procedures to claim these benefits would be shortened to 15 days from the current one to two months.

The unemployed will also receive advice about reputable training centres, he said.

However, Chinh and some experts expressed their concerns about some of the shortcomings they had discovered during the implementation of the policy.

He said workers from enterprises with less than 10 employees are the most vulnerable to unemployment, but they are not included in the policy and will not receive any support if they lose their jobs.

Many employers refused to pay insurance or stole their employees' contributions. However, there was still no effective punishment methods for them, he said.-VNA