(VOVworld)- After Vietnam joined the ASEAN Community, Vietnamese labours in 8 professions including doctors, dentists, nurses, accountants, surveyors, architects, engineers and tourism professionals are allowed to be employed freely within the bloc. This creates both opportunities and challenges for Vietnam to develop  its vocational training sector, improve its human resources and stabilize its labor market.

Joining the ASEAN Community, Vietnamese laborers have great opportunities to find jobs in 9 other countries. Therefore, it is essential to pay more attention to vocational training and developing highly skilled workers who are employable not only in Vietnam, but also in other countries. Duong Duc Lan is General Director of the General Department of Vocational Training of the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs:  “In recent years, Vietnamese employees have been capable of taking responsibility for jobs requiring high skills that were only taken by foreign experts in the past. We are not worried about the quality of Vietnam’s vocational training. Vietnamese laborers can work in high-end professions, but we lack soft skills including team work, work disciplines and foreign language proficiency”.

Since 2011, Vietnam has focused on improving human resource training and creating a breakthrough in vocational training. The government has implemented the 2011-2020 Vocational Training Strategy and the 2011-2020 Human Resource Development Plan. The Prime Minister has allowed the transfer of foreign training programs and foreign teachers to work in Vietnamese vocational training centers and focused on developing a system of vocational training schools. Mr. Lan said: “We now have around 500 vocational training schools. We’ve selected 120 jobs for training, 34 of which are targeted to reach international levels. We plan to use Australian training programs for 12 advanced jobs. Australian partners are checking the teaching conditions, infrastructure and quality of teachers. 1200 students are expected to receive both Vietnamese and Australian graduate certificates from our vocational training colleges by 2018. We will cooperate with Germany in training 14 other jobs”.