Statistics released by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security show that 16,000 vocational schools have been set up in China with the investment of enterprises, individuals and other non-governmental institutions.

Earlier this year, the Labor and Social Security Bureau of Dongcheng (Eastern) District in Beijing designated 11 schools -- out of 40 candidates -- for vocational training of local laid-off workers and jobless people.

Xie Yuan, a labor official with the ministry, said China viewed re-employment as crucial to its development and had mapped out a string of measures as part of a back-to-work program.

According to the Regulation on Unemployment Insurance enacted in 1999, all jobless people have a right to receive free vocational training and the fees will be paid by local governments in the form of subsidies.

To obtain these subsidies, however, schools must make sure that their training meets government standards.

For the time being, training programs targeting the laid-off and jobless fall into two categories, namely, those officially authorized to issue qualifications and those simply for short-termed-employment within a community.

In Beijing, the Dongcheng Accounting and Trade School beat other competitors to become a designated training school in the Eastern District responsible for the training of more than 5,000 unemployed.

School head Tian Maotan said, "China's vocational training market has been growing fast as more and more professions require job licenses.

"Given most of the jobless are poorly-educated and relatively unskilled, their desire for training is fair strong," he added.

But despite the rosy market prospects, schools also find problems when they try to accelerate the program.

For example, most trainees can only receive short-term training which usually lasts no more than six months and school time is often too changeable to be arranged.

As training interests range from pedicure to jewel appraising, Tian noted, it is often hard to find enough students to form a class.

To solve the problem, many schools have called on labor departments to play a bigger role in management, he said.

Zhang Ruilian, a labor official in Beijing's Eastern District, said that they would try to keep a closer watch on public training demands and schools' teaching capabilities so as to make sure the two were coordinated.

China's vocational training targeting the unemployed started in1998 and, by 2001, some 12 million laid-off workers had been trained, of which 7.8 million were re-employed.

Under the new training project, another 10 million are expected to be trained by the end of 2003.

(Xinhua News Agency October 11, 2002)