SOC TRANG — Students from poor families, especially those belonging to the ethnic Khmer community in Soc Trang, will be offered more incentives to take advantage of vocational training facilities, say provincial authorities.

The province plans to reduce or remove tuition fees for students coming from poor Khmer families, organise awareness campaigns about vocational training and the potential to generate self-employment, they add.

The officials were speaking at the closing session of a conference held last week to review the sector’s progress over the first nine months of the year.

The southern province currently has over 700,000 people of working age, of which the Khmer account for 30 per cent, according to the Department of Labour, Invalids, and Social Affairs.

Each year, 10,000 to 12,000 people join the labour pool, mostly from rural areas. So, vocational training and creation of jobs for labourers, especially rural labourers in the areas where Khmer people live, is becoming an urgn problem.

Soc Trang has established a vocational college, an employment centre, nine vocational training centres in districts and towns and many guild villages.

In recent years, Soc Trang Province has invested tens of billions of dong into building facilities for vocational training centres in local areas.

Phan Van Thang, director of the Soc Trang Department of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, said 15,438 labourers have been trained in the first nine months this year, of them 146 have been sent to work abroad.

The unemployment rate decreased from 6.7 per cent to 5.7 per cent, and the unemployment period among rural workers decreased from 24 per cent to 21 per cent.

The number of trained labourers in the workforce increased from 14 per cent to 18.9 per cent.

Despite achievements, the conference was told that the vocational training sector continued to face many problems.

A survey conducted in the districts of My Xuyen, Long Phu, Ke Sach, My Tu, Thanh Tri and other places showed that vocational training centres had good facilities but did not attract many trainees.

Pham Van Huong, director of the My Tu vocational training centre, explained that although the Government had issued many supportive policies on labour, employment and vocational training for rural labourers, poor households were not aware of the value of learning new trades.

Limited awareness and fear of living away from home were inhibiting factors for most rural labourers, he said.

There are also people who want to learn a trade, but will only go to centres, if the government paid for living expenses including accommodation, food and travel, according to Huong

The shortage of qualified teachers in the centres was also a problem that needs to be addressed, Huong said.

Since the training provided did not match current market needs, the rate of unemployment among the trainees was high at about 40 per cent.

In the coming months, the department will work to orient facilities in the province towards training workers who can be sent abroad as guest workers. Priority will be given to building facilities and procuring the needed equipment for this purpose. —