VietNamNet Bridge – Most leading enterprises in the transport industry expressed their dissatisfaction towards the quality of human resources in the field, heard at a workshop held earlier this week.

Workers at the Dung Quat Shipbuilding Industry Company. The country is facing an increasing need to enhance training and improve the quality of workers in the transport sector.

The workshop, organised by Giao Thong & Van Tai (Traffic and Transport) newspaper, brought together experts and industry managers to discuss solutions to the existing problems of the transport sector with regard to staff training.

Tran Bao Ngoc, deputy director of Personnel Department of the Transport Ministry, pointed out that a lot of effort was required to meet the transport industry's projected demand for 550,000 workers by 2015 and for more than 630,000 by 2020.

He also stated that the pressure to enhance training and improve the quality of workers was very high, as Viet Nam has planned that by 2020, 97 per cent of the work force in the transport industry should be trained staff. Of which, nearly 37 per cent should be graduates from universities or colleges, 58 per cent should be graduates from vocational training schools and less than 5 per cent should have at least gone through basic training courses.

Nguyen Van Hanh, deputy director of the Viet Nam National Shipping Lines, stated that the current training programmes at schools were so theory-intensive and offered little room for practical sessions to create a balance.

He added that many students with a major in transportation had completed their education in four years, but still seriously lacked practical experience.

He pointed out that in the maritime sector, Vietnamese seamen had a disadvantage because of poor foreign language skills, which affects the potentiality of sending Vietnamese seamen overseas.

Hanh added that another problem was that Vietnamese seamen often had poorer health compared to their fellow seamen from various other countries.

He urged for the restructure and improvement of training programmes to make them better catch up with the actual demand of the market.

Le Dinh Tho, deputy minister of Transport, stated that it was time to change from the "study to know" mindset to "study to work" mindset.

He stated that transport was a pivotal economic sector, and the industry was now urgently in need of more human resources in professions to promote traffic safety, vehicle registration or transport management.

Nguyen Hoang Long, vice principal of the Ha Noi-based University of Transport Technology, admitted to the imbalance between theory and practise in training programmes. He noted that transport schools have failed to keep up with the increasingly advanced technology due to limitations in equipment and facilities.

He stated that there was still a large gap between training and reality.

According to Ngo Trong Nghia, deputy director of the Civil Engineering Construction Corporation No. 4 (Cienco 4), in order to help training keep up with the real professional requirements, the company had directly cooperated with schools and offered support with the costs.

Deputy Minister Tho added that strategic, long-term cooperation between schools and enterprises needed to be fostered to help solve the problem of human resources shortage.

The schools need to be active in cooperating with companies and companies also need to make plans to work with schools for the training and recruitment of students.

VNS/VNN