A vocational training course for 120 workers from poor districts in the two provinces of Quang Tri and Quang Ngai, who are waiting to go on overseas contracts, started in the northern province of Hung Yen on August 28.

After three months of training, all 120 workers will be sent to Malaysia and the Middle East.

The training is part of a government project to help poor districts increase their labour exports. The project has received a warm response from businesses and many provinces nationwide after a three-month trial run in Thanh Hoa, Yen Bai and Quang Ngai provinces.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Vice Minister of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs Nguyen Thanh Hoa said that there are around 2,000 workers who have registered to work abroad.

“This figure shows that there is a big demand for job opportunities abroad from poor districts nationwide”, said Vice Minister Hoa.

He added that the Overseas Labour Management Department and labour export companies are selecting a number of well paid bona fide labour contracts for these workers.

The Ministry of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs is expected to expand the project to many other poor districts nationwide in the near future, after evaluating and drawing lessons from the outcomes recorded during the pilot project.

Next year the project intends to send around 5,000-6,000 workers abroad and this figure is expected to rise to 50,000-60,000 for the entire 2011-2015 period.

According to the Ministry’s statistics, there are 61 districts in Vietnam where the number of poor households is over 50 percent, 3.5 times higher than the country’s average.

The number of people from these poor districts working abroad reached nearly 5,000 during the 2006-2007 period, accounting for just under 3 percent of the country’s total exported workforce./.