Low vocational skills: Weakness of workers when entering AEC

Vietnamese enterprises have yet to take advantage of the establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) due to weak human resources, although Vietnam ranks third in ASEAN in terms of labor force.

According to experts, when Vietnam joins the AEC, textiles and garments will be among the top industries that benefit the most, because the export tax rate on garments will be reduced to 0%. However, currently, Vietnamese textile and garment enterprises still face many difficulties and challenges and are not taking advantage of opportunities.

According to the industry's calculations, the average labor productivity in the industry is 1/3 of that of Hong Kong, 1/4 of that of China and 1/8 of that of South Korea. In the textile industry alone, productivity is only 90% of that of China and 85% of that of Thailand. Compared to the overall productivity of the garment industry, Vietnam is only 60% of that of other countries in the region. According to industry statistics, Vietnam's labor productivity is only 1.5-1.8 USD/hour.

Vietnam is facing a situation of "too many teachers and not enough workers".

This greatly affects the cost, reducing the competitiveness of the product. At the same time, it causes direct difficulties for businesses when the pressure on labor costs is increasing, while labor productivity is not corresponding.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Thu Huong, Vice Principal of Hanoi Textile and Garment College (Vietnam Textile and Garment Group) cited that in the global textile and garment value chain, the most profitable stages are sample design, supply of raw materials and trade, but currently, most businesses only participate in the final product production stage, creating the lowest added value, with a profit margin of only about 5% -10%, but do not carry out the design process and are not able to design and build their own brands. The main reason is due to limitations in human resource qualifications and lack of market information.

According to calculations of the entire textile and garment industry, the human resource demand in the period of 2016 - 2020 for management positions, professional expertise, economic sector, technical sector, and technical workers is on average 3,240 people/year; 13,200 people/year; 5,650 people/year; 7,550 people/year and 50,600 people/year respectively.

Currently, there are 12 schools nationwide that train university-level human resources for the textile and garment industry, of which 9 have just enrolled in the last 5 years. The number of students enrolled in these 12 schools is only approximately 300 - 500 students/year. There are many types of human resources that are very necessary for the textile and garment industry, such as order management, but there is no training facility. Some stages that require a large human resource, such as fiber, weaving, and dyeing, require about 300 - 400 engineers/year, but universities can only provide about 30 students/year, not meeting 10% of the development needs of the entire industry.

From this reality, Ms. Huong believes that high-quality human resources for businesses are seriously lacking in both quantity and quality, so Vietnam will find it difficult to take advantage of opportunities from the AEC both in the short and long term.

Not only textiles, but other industries also face difficulties when the labor force structure also has many major shortcomings and is difficult to overcome in the near future. Currently in Vietnam, there is a situation of "too many teachers, not enough workers" with the ratio of 1 University/ 0.35 College/ 0.65 Secondary/ 0.4 Primary. Meanwhile, according to the law, direct workers (intermediate, primary level) must be many times more than indirect workers (university level or higher).

According to a survey by the World Bank (WB), the proportion of highly skilled workers in the total number of working workers in Malaysia is 25%, in Singapore it is 49%, while in Vietnam it is currently only about 15%.

According to the WB survey, if we take a 10-point scale for labor quality, Vietnam only scores 3.79 points; ranking 11th out of 12 Asian countries participating in the WB ranking. Meanwhile, South Korea scores 6.91 points; India, Malaysia and Thailand score 5.76; 5.59 and 4.94 points respectively.

In addition to poor skills, Mr. Vu Xuan Hung, Director of the Institute for Vocational Training Science Research (General Department of Vocational Training) admitted that Vietnamese workers have difficulty participating in the ASEAN labor market due to their foreign language proficiency. Very few Vietnamese workers have learned the languages ​​of ASEAN countries such as Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, etc. In terms of English proficiency, Vietnamese candidates have an average score of 5.78 (on a scale of 0 - 9), in the low average group; behind Malaysia (6.64), the Philippines (6.53) and Indonesia (5.97).

Faced with this reality, the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs has focused investment resources on 45 high-quality vocational schools, with the goal of improving the quality of human resources.

According to Baodautu