Vocational training for rural labourers working in Ho Chi Minh City has not met expectations outlined under the national project on vocational training for rural labourers, according to the Department of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (DoLISA).

Nguyen Thanh Hiep, DoLISA\'s head of vocational training, told Sai Gon Giai Phong (Liberated Sai Gon) newspaper that the city had more advantages than other localities as it has the capacity to train 40,000 labourers each year.

In addition, there are many mobile vocational training models for workers living on the city\'s outskirts as well as programmes to export labourers to other countries.

Despite this capacity, only 1,200 out of thousands of labourers in the city\'s outlying rural areas each year receive vocational training.

The cause is due to outdated equipment at vocational training facilities and a lack of qualified teachers at facilities, particularly those in the city\'s outskirts.

Many vocational training facilities at the district level did not have regular teachers, and have to hire teachers from the inner city\'s vocational training centres, Hiep added.

Moreover, the training programme has not been properly conducted, with each person required to finish their training within three months.

Teachers at vocational training facilities said that three months training was insufficient to qualify for a job.

A student learning computers, for example, in a three-month period only learns basic knowledge.

With insufficient training, the workers found it hard to get hired because they did not meet enterprises\' demand, Hiep explained.

Furthermore, some vocational facilities did not take the initiative to recruit learners or work with enterprises to provide jobs for their graduates, he added.

Experts have said that more vocational training was needed but that it should be adapted to each region\'s condition so that workers were able to find jobs.

In a conference last month, Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan asked localities to set up steering boards to develop new vocational training programmes at the grassroots level.