Vietnam shaping up as skills rival
Keen to export labour to overseas markets
Vietnam could become a rival to Thailand in the lucrative labour export business.
Thailand sends 350,000 workers overseas every year. They remit to their families
more than 50 billion baht, making overseas labour a valuable export earner.
However, the skill levels of Vietnamese workers in fields such as joinery, welding,
commercial wiring, electronics, automobile technology and plumbing are thought to
lag behind those of workers from Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines, another
labour-exporting country.
Mathayom Nipakasem, president of Mathew International Placement, a recruiting
agency, said Vietnam's skill levels were improving and its workers could end up
competing with Thailand in the foreign labour market.
Vietnam was eager to supply other countries with labourers. This year it planned to
send 5,000 skilled workers to Malaysia to work in construction and manufacturing.
They were among 200,000 Vietnamese working outside the country this year.
Nguyen Van Thanh, director of the Development Strategy Institute in Vietnam, who
visited the Thai Labour Ministry recently, said Hanoi hoped to send one million
skilled and unskilled labourers overseas by the end of the decade.
Priority areas were services and agriculture with South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore,
Taiwan, the Middle East and some African countries seen as potential markets.
``We are surveying demand in individual countries,'' he said.
Thailand and Vietnam have similar-size workforces for supplying workers to
countries short of labour. Vietnam, a country of 80 million people, has a workforce of
40 million compared with Thailand's 34 million workers.
Hanoi is battling double-digit unemployment and seeking job opportunities for its
people inside and outside the country. It was under pressure to find jobs after
downsizing the armed forces.
The Vietnamese official said that with diligence, discipline and hard work, Vietnam
could pull in contracts from other countries.
The government, he added, was serious about protecting its overseas labourers and
took stern action against state and private job placement agencies who over-charged
workers.
But a Thai official said Thais also enjoyed a good reputation in the overseas job
market. ``Thai workers work hard and are quick to adapt,'' he said. ``And they have
one thing other workers don't have: smiling faces and hospitality.''
By Penchan Charoensuthiphan Saritdet Marukatat - Bangkok Post - December 02, 2002.
|