~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
The Vietnam News

[Year 1997]
[Year 1998]
[Year 1999]
[Year 2000]
[Year 2001]

Vietnam says more jobless but state will provide


HANOI, Aug 6 (Reuters) - The Asian economic crisis has taken its toll on unemployment in Vietnam but the communist country would not permit the operation of private job centres -- at least not yet, a senior official said on Thursday.

Nguyen Luong Trao, permanent deputy minister of labour, war invalids and social affairs, said the only legal job finding services were operated by state-affiliated companies.

'`Any job centre without the support of a sponsoring (state) agency is illegal,'' he told a news conference. ``We want to restore order in employment activities to avoid cheating.''

Trao, in translated remarks, said some individuals or illegal organisations had set up job centres. ``Some individuals or organisations have abused the name of job centres and asked workers for arrangement fees of up to several thousand dollars in order to provide jobs abroad,'' Trao said.

He gave no examples and said the incidence of crooked job agents was isolated. ``It is not overwhelming or a prevailing trend, but it appears so we have to punish wrongdoing,'' he said. As it has pursued reform in the past decade Vietnam has deregulated parts of the economy. Private banks, law firms, shops, health care, property agents and other businesses are tolerated.

``Probably we will legalise private job centres to operate,'' Trao said, without specifying a timeframe for such a decision. ``Job centre activities have a social, non-commercial purpose. Therefore we assign and encourage state agencies or mass organisations which are able to set up job centres to help workers find jobs,'' he added.

Last month Vietnam announced it had launched a nationwide programme worth $300 million between 1998 and 2000 to create more jobs, boost worker re-training and cushion the blow of unemployment.

The programme aimed to create 1.3-1.4 million new jobs each year -- currently the number of new entrants to the workforce -- and to reduce the urban jobless rate to five percent.

In late April official estimates put urban unemployment at around seven percent and rising. The countrys total unemployment rate was 5.88 percent in 1996 and rose to 6.01 percent last year, Trao said. While reluctant to provide exact figures, he said that to date in 1998 some eight percent of workers from 2,214 state enterprises polled had been laid off.

A recent report by the labour ministry showed almost a quarter of Vietnams workforce was under-employed, with most of those affected living in rural areas. Vietnam has a labour force of 36.3 million, the report added.

REUTERS - August 06, 1998.