Int'l Integration Needs Better Quality Workforce

Trao said, together with trade and investment growths, the WTO entry will create more employment opportunities for labourers in the foreign investment sector, production and export processing sectors, economic sectors with high growth rate like banking, finance, telecommunication and tourism, and sectors with participation of small and medium enterprises.

 

In addition, the competition environment of an integrated economy will stimulate the development of science and technology, thus, requiring higher levels of the workforce. This is also a momentum for the development of the Vietnamese human resource because labourers will have chances to contact with advanced management methods of the world, to increase their skill levels and management abilities, and to get familiar with modern working styles.

 

The deputy minister pointed out one of strong points of Vietnam in the international economic integration is a young workforce and low labour cost. However, he also said that the low labour cost alone couldn’t turn this advantage into opportunity because other countries are ready to compete with Vietnam. Besides, the low labour cost factor only exposes advantage in labour-intensive sectors, not economic sectors using high tech or large capital.

 

Thus, according to Deputy Minister Trao, Vietnam need to try to realise three factors to improve the quality of the Vietnamese workforce, namely improving professional knowledge, skills and practices; fostering working disciplines, legal knowledge and legal awareness of labourers; and improving awareness of working practices, modern and processional ways of working.

This requires efforts from all sides concerned, including education, training and vocational foundations, enterprises and especially labourers themselves. As regards human resource training strategy, Vietnam continues training workers for labour-intensive sectors while focusing on developing human resources for high-tech industries.

 

Regarding the effects of Vietnam’s entry into the WTO on hunger eradication and poverty reduction, Deputy Minister Nguyen Luong Trao said, the international economic integration in general and the WTO accession in particular will have positive impacts on poverty reduction.

 

Firstly, commercial and investment activity expansion will push up economic growth, creating more jobs, especially in the small and medium enterprise area. The economic, commercial and investment growths resulting from integration will also increase economic accumulation sources and create a dynamic economy, ideal conditions for poverty reduction.

 

However, Mr. Trao warned that the international economic integration could possibly lead to a widening income gap and living standard. A number of employees in weak enterprises may lose jobs and become the poor.

 

To ensure the poor to enjoy benefits from the integration process, the Ministry of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA) is planning to propose the Government to build and improve the social welfare system that more people can join the social insurance.

In addition, the ministry will concentrate on developing labour-intensive sectors to attract manual, young and rural workers, continuing investment programmes for remote areas, ethnic minorities areas, avoiding pouring too much investment to developed areas, opening social policies for poor people in order to gradually narrow or restrain the rich-poor gap widening speed in the society.