VietNamNet Bridge - The Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA) is trying to create jobs for hundreds of thousands of unemployed university graduates in a project to export laborers. 

However, it’s still too early to evaluate the feasibility of the project.

MOLISA is building up a plan to send workers with professional and technical qualifications abroad in 2017-2020. Japan, South Korea, Germany and Slovakia are the target markets.

Tong Hai Nam, deputy head of MOLISA’s Overseas Workers Department, confirmed that the ministry is putting forward solutions to create jobs for university graduates who still have not found jobs in the domestic market. 

However, he declined to give more details about the plan, saying that it is still necessary to conduct more surveys to perfect the plan.

Some sources said Vietnam now has 200,000 unemployed bachelor’s degree graduates, but there is no further information about them. 

“We still need to find out what group of subjects the unemployed university graduates belong to and in what majors they were trained – in social sciences or polytechnique,” he said.

“It is also necessary to find out the reasons behind their unemployment – they cannot find any jobs, or have found the jobs which cannot satisfy them,” he said. 

Pham Do Nhat Tan, deputy chair of VAMAS (Vietnam Association of Manpower Supply), when asked if the labor export plan can be implemented, said this would depend on business fields. 

Tan said the nurses sent recently to Japan and Germany have been highly appreciated. Vietnamese workers in information technology sent to Japan and Singapore, or high-quality welders to South Korea, are also very welcomed.

“If we send workers in these fields abroad, the plan will be feasible, even if we have to retrain them before sending them abroad,” he said

According to Tan, the success of the plan depends if Vietnam can supply workers in the fields the target markets want. Not all university graduates can be sent abroad.

Nguyen Van Hai, 27, from Hai Duong province, now works for a plastics factory in Japan, said after finishing junior college (3-year training), he took a job as an accountant for a telco in Vietnam. However, since the salary of VND5 million did not satisfy him, he decided to work abroad.

In 2015, after passing the exam on Japanese language and experiencing 4-month training in Vietnam, Hai left for Japan, where he can earn VND30 million a month. The knowledge he received from school in Vietnam is not useful for his post now.

Tran Van Ngoc, 22, who has just finished the Hai Duong Economics Junior College, said he is learning Korean to prepare to leave for South Korea.

Tien Phong