Vietnam should use unemployment insurance fund to train labourers

Hanoi (VNA) - Vietnam should use part of its sizeable 67 trillion VND (2.9 billion USD) unemployment insurance fund to train workers in professional skills.

This is particularly important for those at risk of losing their jobs because companies have changed their employment criteria, said Bui Sy Loi, Vice Chairman of the National Assembly’s Committee for Social Affairs during a meeting on March 5 on the Vietnam Government Portal.

The meeting focused on how to improve the quality of labourers and cut the proportion of labourers working in the agriculture, forestry and fishery sectors to less than 33 percent of the total labour force by 2025.

To do that, agencies should issue a mechanism to encourage companies to train labourers with the skills they needed, he said.

Both companies and labourers would gain from this as companies would not need to recruit new staff and workers would retain their jobs, he added.

“In Singapore, each citizen receives money from the government each month to learn something new in order to improve their professional skills,” he added.

It’s a good model that we should consider, he said.

Also at the meeting, Truong Anh Dung, Deputy Director of the ministry’s General Directorate of Vocational Education and Training, said the ministry is working on a project to improve the quality of human resources and attract more labourers to the IT sector.

The most important thing is inspiring them to work in the sector, he added.

The directorate should make a short video to show workers what they should study, where they could work after graduation and how much they could earn, he said.

Changing teaching methods to meet global criteria in schools training people for the IT sector is also important, he said.

Dung said the IT sector is lacking about 700,000 workers.

Labour structure shifting

Resolution No 39-NQ/TW, issued January 15 last year by the Politburo, sets a target that the proportion of labourers working in the agriculture, forestry and fishery sectors will fall to less than 33 percent of the total labour force by 2025 to serve modernisation.

Dung said to reach the goal, we should train rural labourers with the skills needed to operate in hi-tech agriculture and organic agriculture.

Providing rural labourers with the necessary skills to work in the industrial and service sectors was one of the core solutions, he added.

Recently, the Government had directed localities to focus on creating more jobs in the service sector so rural labourers have more opportunities to find employment, he said.

Loi added that the agricultural sector should be restructured from rice to livestock./.