[Vnbiz] Vietnam Businesses Struggle to Find Workers

Sat Feb 3 09:20:10 PST 2007

Hi All,

I believe a Swiss man has opened an institute for the training of those
working in the Hotel and Restaurant field.  I know that he invested quite a
bit of money and has amazing facilities for creating top quality pastry
chefs.  I knew a gentleman with many years of experience setting up
schools in Vietnam and he worked on the project.   I believe the name of the
school has European and Institute in the title, other than that I can offer
no more.

On a side note I also was wondering the same regarding the need of more
vocational education.  Good for those working in the NGO sector on this
board to consider and discuss.
Curiously, I know that education is a protected field, mostly, by the
government.

In Vietnam is there a difference between primary and or academic education
and vocational for investment purposes.  Further is there a difference
between a centre and a school.  In a school they educate, strict
accreditation process.  In a centre they help to prepare you for a skills
based, or knowledge based test, no accreditation required (in the US).

Craig

On 2/2/07, Hong-Phong_Pho at ita.doc.gov <Hong-Phong_Pho at ita.doc.gov> wrote:
>
> [ Vietnam Business Forum ]
>
>
>
>
>
> Thank you, anh Tai, for posting this very interesting and important
> article.
> It broaches a very important subject that's central to the economic,
> political, social and all other aspects of a country's development: jobs.
> We observe the paradoxical situation of "people, people everywhere, and
> not a worker to be found".  The article correctly identify the key
> problem/solution as vocational training.
> We have a lot of people who need jobs and more jobs than qualified
> workers.  So the businesses need workers.
> An entrepreneur is someone who identifies a need and make money satisfying
> that need.
> Does anyone in this forum know of programs/businesses that train people
> for employment domestically?
> HPP
>
>
>   *"Phan, Tai" <Tai.Phan at ed.gov>*
> Sent by: vnbiz-bounces at mail.saigon.com
>
> 02/02/2007 09:24 AM   Please respond to
> vnbiz at vietlinks.net
>
>    To
> <vnbiz at vietlinks.net>  cc
>   Subject
> [Vnbiz] Vietnam Businesses Struggle to Find Workers
>
>
>
>
> [ Vietnam Business Forum ]
>
> Vietnam Businesses Struggle to Find Workers
>
> )
>
>
> With Vietnam's economy booming, businesses are having a harder time
> recruiting staff. Some factories are running below capacity for want of
> workers. The shortage comes to a head during the traditional lunar New Year
> holiday, or Tet, when urban Vietnamese return to their native villages - and
> their employers hope they come back. From Hanoi, Matt Steinglass has more.
> With barely more than two weeks before Tet, the Vietnamese lunar new year,
> the streets of Hanoi are starting to fill with the traditional decorations
> of kumquat trees and peach blossoms. Airline and train tickets for the
> holidays are already sold out, as city residents prepare to return to their
> ancestral villages for the holidays.
>
> Officially, the Vietnamese get a week off for Tet. But each year, some of
> them stay home for a few days longer. And some simply find work elsewhere,
> and never come back at all.
>
> It is a habit their employers do not appreciate, said Bui Van Tho, the
> personnel manager at the Viet Hung garment company in Hanoi.
>
> Tho says about 70 percent of his company's workers will come back from Tet
> on time. Twenty percent will come back late, and 10 percent will never come
> back.
>
> Nguyen Huu Dung, the head of Vietnam's Social and Labor Sciences
> Institute, says post-Tet no-shows have become a serious problem.
>
> Dung says at some garment companies, up to 40 percent of workers fail to
> come back after Tet. He says workers abandon their jobs if they can find
> similar ones in their home provinces.
>
> Investors crowd Saigon Securities Incorporation (SSI)'s trading floor in
> Ho Chi Minh city
>
>
>
> The problem is exacerbating a labor shortage in many sectors of Vietnam's
> booming economy. Nguyen Thanh Tung, the employment services director at Ho
> Chi Minh City's industrial parks board, says companies lack both skilled and
> manual laborers.
>
> Tung says the shortage has grown more severe over the past few years. He
> says technology companies in Ho Chi Minh City's industrial parks have been
> short by 500 to a 1,000 engineers for three years now.
>
> Increasingly, he says, somewhere between five and seven percent of
> high-tech workers fail to return after Tet.
>
> Labor shortages, surprisingly, are a common problem in the developed and
> developing East Asian countries, despite their often huge populations.
>
> Even in China, with its 1.3 billion people, many factory owners are
> experiencing a shortage of workers.
>
> Dang Trung Dung of the Vietnamese leather manufacturing company Ladoda has
> been seeking 50 skilled leatherworkers for four months.
>
> Dung says just four new skilled leatherworkers have turned up so far.
>
> The company's expert staff are stuck stitching wallets on the production
> line, he says, when they should be designing new products.
>
> Even as the factories starve for workers, Vietnam has a vast supply of
> surplus labor in the countryside. Almost 60 percent of the workforce works
> in the inefficient agricultural sector.
>
> Impoverished rural workers should be happy to find work in urban
> factories. But a 2005 report by the Asian Development Bank says the
> Vietnamese labor market suffers from "market segmentation" - that is, rural
> farm workers are not moving to fill the urban labor shortage.
>
> The ADB report says the government fails to enforce minimum wage and
> social insurance laws, which discourages farmers from taking factory jobs.
>
> Another problem is communist Vietnam's system of residency permits. Many
> migrant workers cannot get permits to live in big cities like Hanoi and Ho
> Chi Minh City. Without a residency permit, migrant workers have difficulty
> qualifying for public health care, or sending their children to school.
>
> But the Asian Development Bank says the main reason for the shortage is a
> lack of training. The ADB says government educational and training
> institutions "lack the capability to prepare the population" for the
> changing economy.
>
> Nguyen Huu Dung of the Social and Labor Sciences Institute says the
> government is working on the problem.
>
> Dung says vocational schools need to adapt to the skills that the market
> demands, and more links need to be made between schools and employers.
>
> That cannot happen soon enough for employment services manager Tung.
>
> Tung says it used to be that workers needed employers. Now, it is the
> employers who need the workers. And with Tet coming up, businesses can only
> hope their employees will still be there when the holidays end.
>
> VOA News
>
>
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