VietNamNet Bridge – Providing vocational training for people in rural areas remains a problem for HCM City.

Nguyen Van Troi, deputy head of the Cu Chi District Social Affairs, Invalids and Labour Division, said that many people in his district are reluctant to attend training courses because they have livelihoods to take care of.

Others are not literate and so are too "shy" to attend, he told the Nhan Dan daily (The People).

Many who join the courses drop out for no reason, he added.

Tran Minh Phung, deputy rector of the Cu Chi Vocational School, said 800 out of 1,060 people registering to attend the school's courses last year dropped out.

He said authorities should provide counselling to help people choose careers before attending training.

Besides, the training is of poor quality since it only lasts three months, according to the city Department of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs. Outdated machinery at vocational schools has also been blamed for the quality.

Cu Chi District planned to train more than 64,000 people between 2010 and 2015, 21.84 per cent of them in agricultural skills.

But actual numbers of farm trainees remain low. In the first nine months of this year, for instance, they accounted for only 129 out of a total of 1,225.

To improve the quality of training, the city People's Committee approved in July a non-agricultural vocational training project for rural areas for the period until 2020.

It envisages training 70 per cent of the workforce in the city's five rural districts of Cu Chi, Binh Chanh, Hoc Mon, Nha Be and Can Gio by 2015.

This number will rise to 90 per cent by 2020. To ensure the project is effective, district authorities have been ordered to provide figures on demand and capacity.

The department reported that vocational training has been provided to 15,454 people in rural districts since 2010.
In the first six months of this year, more than 2,300 people were trained.

VietNamNet/VNS