At the policy troubleshooting workshop on May 18, Mr. Truong Anh Dung, General Director of Vocational Education, Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs, said that up to now, localities have only received applications or

However, statistics from Vietnam Social Insurance as of May 17 show that the Social Insurance agencies of 12 provinces and cities have only received applications for support payments from 31 businesses approved by the locality.

This agency assessed that the implementation was slow, causing problems such as the list of approved workers being different from the actual list of trained workers.

Workers fill out new job search information at the Hanoi Employment Service Center.

Mr. Dung admitted that the disbursement rate was very low compared to initial expectations, even though the General Department had organized about 30 working sessions with localities and businesses to deploy.

According to regulations, the application deadline is June 30 and the implementation period is December 31.

There are many reasons why businesses are not interested in support policies.

Leaders of some vocational schools and businesses analyzed that the regulations sound very easy but in reality, they are very difficult to implement, taking 2-3 months to complete a set of documents.

`The difficult situation for businesses is that they still have to produce and do business, so if retraining, it is necessary to build a program that is appropriate and flexible for each place’s conditions,` said Mr. Nguyen Viet Ha, Long Bien Vocational College (belonging to the Company).

The Association of Small and Medium Enterprises also believes that it is necessary to extend the policy implementation period until the end of 2023, removing the requirement that businesses must demonstrate a plan to maintain jobs because they cannot retain workers when they quit.

Catalan brick workers operate a line in a factory in Bac Ninh, March 2022.

The policy to support training to maintain jobs for workers is in the group of 12 overall policies under Resolution 68 (package of VND 26,000 billion) issued on July 1, 2021.

For the first time, the policy includes a security package to support businesses and workers affected by Covid-19, with the goal of retraining one million workers, with a total estimated cost of VND 4,500 billion extracted from the Unemployment Insurance Fund.

When drafting Resolution 42 (62,000 billion VND package) in 2020, the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs included this policy with an expected budget of 3,000 billion VND, but it has not been implemented.

According to statistics from the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs, in 2020, the total amount of unemployment benefits and vocational training support was nearly 19,600 billion VND (an increase of 40% compared to 2019).