Improving Food Processing Labor Skills in Laos through Cooperative Training (CT

Abstract

Based on our case study survey, the majority of the factories said that most common vocational skills development (VSD) programmes did not contribute to alleviating skills needs. In- employment programmes address employers’ needs better than pre-employment ones^[1].

According to our survey:

• Small to medium food processing factories struggled to find qualified, skilled or experienced employees.
• Recruitment is based on availability of interested local people, and qualified people prefer to work in larger and more stable factories.
• This necessitates provision of specific in- house training or on the job training to newly recruited staff to overcome skill shortages.
• The perception of the value of training programmes is very different among the factories surveyed considering the demands of growth and transformation.
• As these in-house training schemes have been deployed without any collaboration and cooperation among the factories or with local training institutions, these in- house trained employees can barely adapt to the growth and transformation of their respective factories with respect to changing products and technology.