Representatives from the welfare department of Osaka Prefecture join a virtual signing ceremony on nursing manpower education and supply with Đà Nẵng City's Đông Á University in Japan.  — Photo courtesy of Phương Chi

ĐÀ NẴNG — Osaka Prefecture in Japan has signed a comprehensive agreement on human resources supply and internship programmes in the nursing industry with Đà Nẵng City’s Đông Á University, offering job opportunities in Osaka for Vietnamese students from central Việt Nam.

The agreement will facilitate Vietnamese students from the Đà Nẵng-based university’s nursing faculty working and studying in the healthcare sector in Osaka from 2024.

Vietnamese students will be joining practical job and Japanese language courses from nine months to one year in preparation for working at hospitals and nursing centres in Japan or Việt Nam after graduation at the university.

Yoshida Shinji, director of the welfare department of Osaka Prefecture, said the internship programme would not only fill up the human resources shortage in the nursing industry in Japan, but would also benefit Việt Nam in the future.

“Japan has been facing a low birth-giving rate and an increase in its ageing population recently. This results in a high demand for nursing manpower at elderly welfare centres in Japan. I expect that Vietnamese students from Đà Nẵng City’s Đông Á University will attain skills, techniques and knowledge during their studies in Osaka – where there is a high-tech nursing centre – and serve as high-quality human resources at home,” he said at the virtual agreement signing ceremony.

A student from Đông Á University is interviewed by a Japanese employer from Aijinkai Healthcare Corporation for working in the nursing industry in Japan. More than 300 students from the University have been working in Japan. —Photo courtesy of Phương Chi

He said Osaka would be strengthening the co-operation with the university in the coming years.

Osaka was the first locality in Japan to host students from central Việt Nam for one-year at-work training and internship courses at hospitals after the COVID-19 pandemic in 2022.

Rector of Đông Á University Nguyễn Thị Anh Đào said the nursing manpower supply agreement was a strategic plan in education and supplying high-quality manpower for the Japanese market as part of the university’s 100-partner network over past decades.

She said co-operation in education and practical job programmes with more than 100 Japanese partners had helped create a high-quality labour force for both Japan and Việt Nam in various industries.

“Japanese partners support Vietnamese students in language and job training as well as culture and basic skills through internship programmes. We expect to send from 300 to 500 students to Japan annually, targeting to increase that to 700 to 1,000 students in 2025.”

More than 300 students from the Đà Nẵng-based private university have been working for Japanese companies in hospitality, nursery and shopping centres in Japan since 2017.

Eight cities in Japan, including Fukuoka, Yokohama, Maebashi, Chiba, Shizuoka, Tokyo, Tottori and Nagasaki, and 82 Japanese businesses have inked co-operation deals for student human resources training and employment from central Việt Nam.

The first Japanese language studies and culture research faculty, established at Đông Á university in 2020, has taught 2,000 students Japanese. The university is the only education centre in central Việt Nam supplying human resources for the Japanese labour market.

Đông Á University, the first private university in the central region of Việt Nam, officially opened a representative office in Tokyo, Japan, to boost high-quality human resources and education cooperation between Việt Nam and Japan. — VNS