Difficult problem in Thanh Chuong

(Baonghean) -As an agricultural district with abundant labor resources, however, the number of untrained workers accounts for a large proportion and has little opportunity to access jobs in factories, enterprises as well as create jobs on the spot. How to help rural workers have more jobs according to the motto "leaving agriculture but not leaving home" is a difficult problem, a concern of the Party Committee and the government of Thanh Chuong district...

Since the Lunar New Year of Quy Ty, many village and hamlet youth union branches in Thanh Hoa commune (Thanh Chuong district) have had difficulty maintaining their activities because most of their youth union members have gone to the South or found work in industrial parks in other districts in the province. There are even hamlets such as Hoa Thinh and Hoa Son where the youth union branches do not have rural youth union members participating in activities, and 4/8 hamlets have had to hire school youth union members to become village and hamlet youth union branch secretaries. Mr. Nguyen Duc Nham - Secretary of Thanh Hoa commune's Youth Union, said: Because the economic life mainly depends on agriculture, there are few secondary occupations in the area, and there is a lack of capital, many youth union members have to leave the village to make a living. Currently, the whole commune has about 250 youth union members working far away, and the villages lack young people, so organizing Youth Union and Association activities is difficult.

According to Mr. Phan Sy Duc - Secretary of the District Youth Union, this reality is not only in Thanh Hoa but is a common difficulty in the whole district. Up to now, there are about 39 thousand young people in the area, of which the number of people who go to work far away in industrial zones without vocational training is about 20 thousand people. Leaving with empty hands, lacking knowledge, lacking direction, of course young people encounter many difficulties in the process of starting a career in a foreign land.

Furthermore, in recent times, some businesses have accepted workers but only extended the contract period from 3 to 6 months, then used the excuse of not meeting the job requirements to terminate the contract. A group of workers have poor discipline, often change jobs, quit jobs, and are not hardworking, so businesses are "afraid to accept them". For example, a few years ago, Thanh Chuong District Youth Union introduced 50 workers to work at the Song Tranh Hydropower Plant, but when they arrived, 28 of them returned because they "couldn't stand the boredom", the number of people staying also gradually dropped, in the end only 4 people stayed. Or most recently, Song Hong Garment Company (Nam Dinh) temporarily stopped recruiting workers from Thanh Chuong because of poor labor discipline.



Industrial sewing training class organized by Thanh Chuong District Youth Union.

Currently, Thanh Chuong district has been implementing two projects: Promoting vocational training associated with job creation and sustainable poverty reduction in the period of 2011-2015 and the project on Vocational training for rural workers according to Decision 1956 of the Prime Minister with the goal of training about 4,500 workers each year on average; creating jobs for 2,500 workers. In addition to expanding the scale of concentrated training according to the needs of learners, vocational training under contracts of production and business establishments, enterprises, the district also takes advantage of many support sources to open vocational training classes associated with craft villages or economic models in the area.

The commune and town authorities have also clearly recognized and paid more attention to vocational training to accelerate the process of labor restructuring and economic restructuring, contributing to increasing people's income. If in 2006, the whole district only had 30 production and service establishments and 1 craft village, creating jobs for more than 300 workers, now there are 16 enterprises, 7 joint stock companies, 91 production and business establishments, nearly 200 farm economic models, 5 craft villages and 4 villages with occupations, creating regular jobs for more than 4,000 workers. In particular, vocational training also contributes to improving the quality of exported labor. On average, Thanh Chuong has nearly 800 people going abroad to work each year. However, the current difficulty is that the funding for vocational training and job creation is still limited, not meeting the requirements. On average, each year, the capital from the employment fund is about 1.5 billion VND divided into 15 projects, each project only receives about 100 million VND. The district budget also only provides an average of 200 million VND per year for vocational training. The source from the vocational training project for rural workers is often behind schedule, so units often have to use reserve funds to implement in advance, which is very difficult.

On the other hand, the training period is only 3 months, so it mainly focuses on the fields of cultivation and animal husbandry, while workers who go to work far away need jobs in the industrial sector such as electricity, mechanics, etc. Therefore, the target group of vocational students is mainly married people aged 35-55, younger people only get about 1%. Another difficulty for rural workers is the lack of investment capital for production and business. Preferential credit sources for the poor to develop the economy do not meet the demand, not to mention the cumbersome administrative procedures. For example, the capital from the youth start-up fund is only 10-15 million VND for one loan and each year only a few people can borrow.

According to Mr. Phan Dinh Ha - Vice Chairman of the District People's Committee, the lack of investment and development of industrial parks like some neighboring districts is also a difficulty in solving on-site employment for local workers. Currently, in the area, there is 1 cassava factory, tea factory, 3 brick factories... which only solve seasonal labor. Therefore, despite many efforts in vocational training and job creation, currently the total number of working-age workers in the district is about 121 thousand people, the number of trained workers only accounts for about 43%...

Khanh Ly