ASEAN nations will pilot a free labour market for skilled workers and
professionals in 2015 as part of a plan to integrate the region economically.
This will enable workers to move freely in the region. However, little
information on the process has been made available. Most Vietnamese have never
heard of the scheme.
Working abroad is a dream that
nurse Nguyen Hoang Lan has nurtured for years. "I have thought about it
since I was single, although I couldn't figure out why," says Lan, who is
now mother to a five-year-old girl and is expecting another child.
"But for now, I know I want
to make it for my children. They must study abroad for a better future,"
the 27-year-old mother says determinedly. "And I will try when it becomes
possible," she says.
Lan has been working for six
years at one of the most popular international hospitals in the city, the Ha
Noi-France Hospital. She has ample English for communication, and she is
confident her skills are sufficient to practice in a foreign country. This
means she can pack up and cross the border to a new world at any time.
Lan's job-seeking will become
even easier now that Viet Nam and nine other ASEAN member nations are making
plans to join a single labour market, plans that were first announced in 2007.
This follows a decision by ASEAN
leaders to build an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) by 2015. In other words,
there will be one heart, one ASEAN. It will closely resemble the European Union
and is expected to open up a free flow of investment, capital and skilled
labour to provide deeper regional economic integration.
Under the AEC plan, skilled
workers and members of seven professions – doctors, dentists, nurses,
engineers, architects, accountants and surveyors – will be able to move freely
within the region. "It is great news," Lan says, her eyes radiating
with joy. "It's a chance for many Vietnamese people to thrive."
Labour experts and national
officials agree that the gains will be far greater than the losses, especially
for Viet Nam. Carmela Torres, from the Bangkok-based International Labour
Organisation, says that as Viet Nam's wages are neither the highest nor the
lowest in ASEAN, there will be a movement of workers both into and out of the
country.
Vietnamese travelling to the
other ASEAN nations (Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia,
Singapore, Laos, Philippines and Brunei) will receive higher pay for their
abilities, says Torres.
Le Quang Trung, deputy director
of the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs' employment bureau – a
Government's body handling labour matters – is also upbeat. "Skilled
labourers will also have a wider variety of choices," he says.
He also envisages advantages from
the inflow. "The arrival of foreign workers will provide many more
opportunities in trade, investment and employment, new knowledge and advanced
technology," he says. "This will help raise the quality of domestic
labour."
Torres says that the free
movement of skilled labour will have a great impact on the regional labour
market, making it more integrated and more qualified.
Engineer Nguyen Khanh Duy also
forecasts a bright future for the information technology job market. "It
will create advantageous pressure since it requires the whole sector, including
training institutions, enterprises and workers, to gear up to stay
competitive," he says. Duy has ventured into designing software for mobile
games that can be played anywhere in the world.
"The competition from the
outside will create an impetus for development rather than worries over the
loss of jobs," the 26-year-old says confidently.
However, obstacles are also
anticipated. All parties acknowledge that Viet Nam is grappling with a bundle
of challenges. These include a shortage of highly-skilled labourers and the
extreme shortage of Vietnamese speaking foreign languages.
According to an International Labour
Organisation report on Labour and Social Trends in ASEAN 2010, there is a great
variation in the levels of labour productivity within the region. The report
indicates that output per worker in 2009 in Viet Nam was about 7 and 20 per
cent of that in Singapore and Malaysia respectively.
Local disadvantages
"It's clear that without
good preparation, domestic labourers will face problems given their low
productivity," admits Trung from the labour ministry. However, of all the
concerns, language barrier is recognised as the biggest.
Head of the nursing division of
the Ministry of Health, Tran Quang Huy, says that although Viet Nam is behind
some of its neighbours in recognising nursing, skills, the work done by home
nurses was at a similar level to the best in the region. "Only their poor
English skills is a disadvantage," he says.
"Without a foreign language,
or English, they find it difficult to access new knowledge, which is a barrier
to integration," he says, adding that this problem is facing the whole nation.
Duy also believes that most home
IT engineers are well-trained, but few are ready to make a change, largely due
to their limited knowledge of a foreign language. He estimates that about 10
out of 500 his fellow graduates from the high-ranking Ha Noi University of
Science and Technology are qualified to work abroad.
A survey that Viet Nam News did
with a small group of nurses from the Ha Noi-France Hospital suggests that 90
per cent of them need to improve both English and professional skills to join the
regional common market.
All the surveyed IT engineers are
in a similar position. As ILO specialist Torres says: "There are
opportunities for workers, but much of which will depend on their language
skills."
According to the Government
officials spoken to, Viet Nam's preparation for the single ASEAN labour market
has so been mainly in handling the legal framework. Trung from the labour
ministry says that a series of laws and strategies have been created to bring
the country fully into the region and the world.
The revised Labour Code, which
comes into force next May, includes amendments targeted at foreign workers. In
the pipeline are laws on employment, work safety, minimum wages and revised
social insurance laws.
Additionally, Viet Nam has
ratified, or plans to ratify, several international conventions on employment,
job services, wages and vocational training. Apart from newly-endorsed
strategies on human resources, education and training, Trung says that the
labour ministry is rushing to submit to the Government another one, part of it
is on joining a single ASEAN labour market.
He says that existing laws
governing the inflow or outflow of workers will be applied after 2015 unless
new agreements are made within the bloc. Trung believes that Viet Nam is shaping
a healthy and transparent labour market to lure the best domestic and foreign
talent.
Huy from the health ministry says
the preparations are laying the foundation for the future. Although praised as
a huge step in creating professionalism in the working environment, a code of
ethics for nurses only came into effect last month, a decade after neighbours
such as the Philippines.
According to Huy, Viet Nam
ratified a Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA) on nursing with other ASEAN
members in 2006. With MRAs, each country can recognise education, experience,
licences and certificates granted in another country.
Six years on, not much has been
done to make the agreement function for Vietnamese nurses. Most have never
heard of it. The survey found that most nurses and midwives at the Ha
Noi-French Hospital and most IT professionals have no idea that there is a free
labour mobility programme.
"The information should have
been made available when we were at school," Duy says. Trung and Huy
acknowledge that there should be a push to make the information widely known
among the public, particularly workers.
Many, like nurse Lan, have
started to envision the future. "I long for the day that I can hit the
road. Will it come true?" queries Lan.
This story and photos were produced under the Reporting Development in
ASEAN series of IPS Asia-Pacific, a programme supported by the International
Development Research Centre.
Ngo Thu Phuong
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