| Industrial zone project leaves farmers jobless |
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(Listed May 15, 2008) |
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 Many farmers, whose land was acquired for the Nam Cam Industrial Park in central Nghe An Province, are unemployed and without the means to earn a living.
Displaced workers are trained to make rattan and bamboo products, but many of the products are not sold because of poor quality and packaging.
They have failed at the jobs for which they were retrained at the State’s expense.
The Nam Cam Industrial Park – the province’s biggest – stands on more than 100ha taken from 10 of 11 villages of Nghi Loc District’s Nghi Xa Commune.
Its building left more than 800 farm labourers without work.
Nghi Xa Commune People’s Committee Chairman Vo Van Dinh says the displaced labourers have been trained to make rattan and bamboo products and grow mushrooms.
All had been eager to learn their new jobs but production of rattan and bamboo had lasted only four months and the growth of mushrooms one year.
The products had not sold because of their poor quality and packaging. "People failed to seek markets for their goods," he says. "We now find it difficult to create new jobs for them."
Nghi Xa is just one of numerous communes that has found it difficult to create work following the completion of provincial construction projects.
These included the Nghi Huong seafood market; the Nghi Phu, Hung Dong and Bac Vinh industrial parks and the Bac-Nguyen Sy Sach road.
Village 8 farmer Nguyen Dinh Tien was one of 45 people in the village trained to grow and process mushrooms two years ago.
The farmer says he did so for almost a year, but the family business failed for lack of materials and sales.
"We learned the job and produced, but when we can’t earn a living from it the State has stood aside."
Nguyen Dinh Tien says many villagers now wanted to send their children to work outside Vietnam but don’t have the money to do so.
The State has provided money for people to work but it’s insignificant.
"My village has hundreds of unemployed labourers but only 22 have worked outside Vietnam," he says.
Provincial Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs Department Vocational Training Division director Nguyen Xuan Phuong says VND6.5bil (US$406,250) has been provided to 33 enterprises to retrain the labourers.
Hundreds of rural vocational training classes are now expected, he says.
The director of Duc Phong Co Ltd, the province’s major rattan and bamboo factory as well as vocational training provider, Thai Dai Phong, says too many enterprises are providing training and this is making it ineffective.
These include factories that do not have the materials, educational tools and money to buy the products made by their trainees.
Provincial administrators have failed to recognise that many of the labourers are not sufficiently industrious to maintain regular jobs, he says.
"Many do not apply themselves to their work or have abandoned the jobs for which they were trained."
Vocational Training Division director Nguyen Xuan Phuong says the province has fostered a programme to create jobs for both farmers whose land was acquired and the unemployed, with every sector and locality given responsibility for it.
But lack of co-ordination has made the programme ineffective.
(Source: Viet Nam News)
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