HA NOI (VNS) — Authorities at all levels need to work together with the whole society to provide vocational training and create jobs for people with disabilities, Deputy Minister of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA) Nguyen Trong Dam has urged.
At present, there are some 6.7 million disabled people in Viet Nam, 60 per cent of whom are of working age.
In 2013, about 80,000 people with disabilities gained vocational skills in jobs that suited their condition, such as spa services, animal husbandry, mushroom cultivation, carpentry, and making clothes and bamboo products.
Over the period, chapters of the Viet Nam Association for the Support of Disabled People and Orphans trained 2,900 people with disabilities and provided jobs for 1,100 of them.
The association organised 33 training courses in 16 provinces across the country.
Nearly 800 people with disabilities from Hung Yen, Ha Nam, Hai Duong, Binh Thuan and Lam Dong and Ha Noi benefited from a Spanish Red Cross-funded project that looked at socio-economic integration and employment support for the target group.
More organisations and businesses also employed people with disabilities. For example, the Customs Division of District 1 in HCM City has recruited more than 40 disabled staff, while 30 more have found jobs at Protec – a safety equipment company, which has built production lines that are friendly to people with disabilities.
According to MOLISA’s General Department of Vocational Training, around 1.5 million people in Viet Nam were taught vocational skills every year, but only 6,000 of them were people with disabilities, an insignificant 0.4 percent.
Tran Quang Dung, Chairman of the Association of People with Disabilities in the northern province of Ha Nam, said disadvantaged circumstances and poor capacity made it hard for people with disabilities to afford training fees.
Additionally, most are only equipped with handicraft-making skills, but those with more advanced skills struggle to find workplaces with suitable facilities.
A prejudiced attitude among businesses towards the group was also stopping people with disabilities from accessing vocational training, Dung added.
At a job placement event organised for people with disabilities in Ha Noi yesterday, Nguyen Thi Kim Oanh, a job consultant for the “Recovery of Working Capacity for Peopl with Disabilities” project which has helped create jobs for 120 people over the past two years, said more companies had become willing to employ people with disabilities, but it was very difficult to find suitable applicants that met their requirements.
“The number of highly skilled workers with disabilities remains limited,” she said.
Oanh said training courses for people with disabilities needed to be adapted to meet the demands of the labour market and the limitations of people with disabilities.
Chairman of the Viet Nam Association for the Support of Disabled People and Orphans Nguyen Dinh Lieu said that society should know that people with disabilities were as capable of working as well as able-bodied people.
He added that providing the group with professional skills was an important mission for managerial agencies and social organisations. — VNS
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