Japan, Vietnam Seek To Ease Financial Burden On Technical Trainees
Japanese and Vietnamese authorities will take steps to ease the financial burden on Vietnamese nationals coming to Japan as technical trainees.
Many Vietnamese technical trainees are working in Japan. As of the end of last year, 58 percent of all technical trainees in Japan, or more than 160,000, were from Vietnam.
But the costs of coming to Japan as a technical trainee are expensive for the Vietnamese.
Japan's Foreign Ministry says the fees Vietnamese trainees need to pay before coming to Japan are somewhere between 3,800 dollars and 7,600 dollars, forcing some of them to take out loans.
The charges include payments to organizations tasked with sending trainees to Japan, costs related to studying the Japanese language, and fees to agents who help them find jobs in Japan.
Such referral agents abound in Vietnam, with some charging job seekers more than 1,500 dollars.
Japanese and Vietnamese officials plan to launch a system that will give trainees free access to job ads and other information in Japan.
The system under consideration is a smartphone app that would list working conditions at Japanese employers accepting trainees, as well as detailed information on the dispatching organizations in Vietnam. It is expected to be put into service on a trial basis as early as next year.