Job training for farmers: huge investment, little gain
Source: 26-JUL-2008 Intellasia | Vietnamnet
Jul 26, 2008 - 7:00:00 AM Vocational training for rural labourers is one of the key missions of rural industrialisation so Vietnam annually invests dozens of billion dong in this job. However, what it gains is tiny.

It is a must for Vietnam to devote agricultural land to industrial development, which seriously affects farmers, who become unemployed after their fields are reclaimed.

To solve this problem and to fulfill the goal of having only 17 million agricultural workers by 2020, the government has carried out many programmes and projects that provide vocational training courses for rural workers.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (Mard), Vietnam has over 25 million rural workers, accounting for 55.7% of the total workforce. Yearly, Vietnam has an additional 1 million working-age people and around 2 million rural labourers who need job training to be able to do non-agricultural works.

Yet, job training courses have attracted only 25% of young rural labourers and this ratio is less for labourers of over 35 years old since they don't understand the significance of the vocational training is to help them catch up with industrialisation.

Tran Gia Hung, deputy director of the Tay Ho Vocational Training School in Hanoi, said Vietnamese people in general and rural people in particular are mistaken about vocational training. They see vocational training courses as a last option, which one chooses only when he cannot enter other training systems. As a result, only 3-4% of rural labourers are trained.

Under the National Target Programme, each farmer attending vocational training courses is provided 300,000 dong/month, for a period of up to 5 months. Besides training fees, farmers who learn a job under the hunger eradication and poverty reduction programme receive lunch, travel fees, etc.

Though they are paid to learn a job, many people are still not interested. In some provinces, local officials have to go to every household to call for people to attend vocational training courses.

"I will learn a job if I'm subsidised but with one condition: I will get a job after the course," said a farmer named Cong Minh Chau in Phu Thuong, Tay Ho district, Hanoi. That's the thinking of many farmers, who want to see how vocational training will benefit them.

Another reason is farmers are afraid of learning new things and they think that fieldwork is hard work but relatively simple.