Doãn Mậu Diệp, Deputy Minister of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, spoke to the newspaper Hải Quan (Customs) about his ministry’s plan to help unemployed workers to find new jobs and to claim their unemployment insurance.

Has Việt Nam adopted measures to support people who have lost their jobs?

Việt Nam is in the process of deep international integration. So people who fail to meet the requirements of their jobs will be dismissed.

To cope with this, the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs will work closely with the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Planning and Investment, and other government agencies and organizations to offer training courses to help workers learn new work skills.

We have also asked all centers for employment services nationwide to provide employment opportunities to job seekers through job transaction floors. The Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs will utilize the social network to spread word of the government’s unemployment policies for those who have lost their jobs.

What will be the challenges during the implementation of the Law on Unemployment Insurance?

The biggest challenge we’re facing during the implementation of the Law on Unemployment Insurance is lack of awareness among workers and employers. Many workers have not fully understood their rights and responsibilities in joining the unemployment insurance fund. For example, many workers falsify their working conditions. And many employers fail to notify authorities about the true number of workers working for them, their wages, and other related issues.

Even worse, some enterprises deliberately delay their employee payments to the unemployment insurance fund. As a result, the outstanding debt in the unemployment fund in 2011 was VNĐ172 billion ($7.7 million). In 2015, the figure jumped to VNĐ311.034 billion ($14 million). This has greatly affected the rights of workers to claim their unemployment insurance money.

Last but not least, many workers are not proactive in seeking new jobs or learning new career skills. What they care about most is submitting papers for unemployment benefits.

What should we do to raise workers’ awareness about their right to work and learn a new occupation after losing their jobs?

Most of our workers who lost their jobs are unskilled workers and they are poor. That’s why, when they lost their jobs, the first thing they thought of was how to claim their unemployment entitlement benefits.

On the other hand, quite a few companies in industrial parks just want to recruit unskilled workers. That’s why many people who are laid off simply try to find new jobs in other companies, instead of attempting to learn a new skill.

But more than 55 percent of Vietnamese workers have attended job training courses. These people don’t need to learn a new career.

Last but not least, I must admit that there are not many choices for people in Việt Nam to learn a new career, due to the limited number of occupational training facilities, coupled with outdated teaching equipment and issues.

How should we improve this situation?

The Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs and other government agencies will join efforts to raise worker awareness about the novel of our Law on Unemployment Insurance.

We’ll do our best to solve outstanding bottle necks in the implementation of the law, so that unemployed workers can have their unemployment entitlement benefits as quickly as possible. — VNS