Thousands of workers struggle to find a suitable job after returning home to Viet Nam despite having good skills and experience of working abroad for years.
Nguyen TrongVinh of Ha Tinh Province’s DucTho District, who had worked as a welder in South Korea, is one of hundreds of such workers seeking a suitable job at a trading session held recently by a labour supply company in Ha Noi.
After trying for a whole year to find a job as a welder at a shipyard – the same work he did in Korea – he now does odd jobs to earn his daily bread.
“I wish to return and work in South Korea or work at a foreign-invested enterprise that allows me to fully tap the skills and experience and the foreign languages I learned when working abroad,” he told Vietnam News Agency.
Tran Van Long of the northern province of VinhPhuc worked for six years in South Korea for a plastic manufacturer who paid him over US$2,000 a month. But since returning home over a year ago he has been working for a plastic company in Bac Ninh Province for just VND2.5 million (less than $250) a month.
“I found it difficult to get a good job with a high salary in Vietnam while there are few opportunities to return to work in South Korea,” he said.
Former guest workers returning to Vietnam also find it hard to get information about demand for workers at foreign firms in the country.
That was the reason why many Vietnamese workers would like to find a job in South Korea when their labour contracts expire, Long said.
According to the Overseas Labour Management Department, Vietnam has around 560,000 workers in 30 industries in 49 countries and territories.Every year some 80,000 go abroad to work.
Only 0.18 per cent of them are experts while 43 per cent are skilled workers, and over 56 per cent are manual labourers.
Nearly 49 per cent of them work in the seafood processing industry, over 6.2 per cent in the maritime transport sector, and 15.2 per cent in households.
But their skills and experience are not utilised when they return to Viet Nam.
A study by the Institute of Labour Science and Social Affairs has found that while over 80 per cent of people can find a job soon after returning home, only 10 per cent find suitable jobs (connected with the work they did abroad), indicating a huge wastage of talent.
“This is a big waste since foreign-invested enterprises in the country have big demand for this workforce,” a representative of Manpower Viet Nam Ltd said.
The Foreign Labour Management Department has said that authorities in 50 of the country’s 63 provinces and cities do not inform about the number of workers returning from abroad and have no policies to support this group.
Most of the returnees have to look for information and jobs on their own. But labour export remains “encouraging” as 55,205 workers have gone abroad so far this year, a 138.5 per cent rise over 2013.
Source: Viet Nam News
Commentary:
More than half a million Vietnamese work abroad. Many of them would like to return home and work in their country. But, unfortunately, in Vietnam they can’t find a job that would correspond to their qualifications and for which they would be paid as much as they receive abroad. It is not only Vietnam’s problem – in the modern economy there are fewer jobs, than people who are willing to work.