Schools seek remedy for labour force ills

The City Vocational College was expected to be able to supply the city’s workforce with many more skilled workers when it received a licence to operate eight years ago, but after a five- year wait the project was granted just VND22 billion ($1.37 million) to invest in capital construction and equipment.

The college is still in dire need of money and continues looking for further grant to implement its second growth phase with a proposed VND45 billion ($2.81 million).
“We have no idea how much money the municipal government would allocate us, but to start business seriously to become a key vocational school, able to train workers in a variety of skills, the college needs about VND100 billion ($6.25 million) in capital,” said Nguyen Tran Nghia, principal of the City Vocational College.
In a similar case, the Southern Saigon Technical High School project in District 8 recently received VND54 billion ($3.37 million) to implement the first phase of a school project after three years of desperately longing for the cash injection. However, land clearance compensation had already eaten into the project capital by as much as VND20 billion ($1.25 million).
Principal Tran Ngoc Trinh said: “We do not know when this training school would be completed. For phase one, we had waited for three years and, for phase two, we still do not know how long the wait would be.”
“For the moment, in order to maintain the normal running of the school, a row of old houses must be converted into classrooms and old equipment must be used on a temporary basis pending the completion of the new school,” Trinh added.
Cu Chi Technical Workers School Hua Van Nhon principal said: “We waited for five years to be allocated capital to start construction work on the school. Finally in 2006 the city government granted VND21 billion for the school project.
But, when the capital reached us it was found to be smaller than the size of capital actually needed to cover the costs of construction and equipment, because an interval of five years means a lot of differences in prices.”
A quick survey of the city’s vocational school investment projects showed that all of the projects had to wait for three to five years before receiving investment capital which was always smaller than the total actual expenses.
Ho Chi Minh City Department of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs’ Vocational Training Office head Nguyen Thanh Hiep said to satisfactorily meet the demand for the training technical workers, each training school needed at least VND80-VND100 billion ($5-$6.25 million), but very few schools were granted investment capital more than VND50 billion ($3.12 million). Most investment capital allocated by the city was mainly for capital construction and not for equipment and workshops.