Skills training helping residents boost wages

Trainees from a vocational school in Xinjiang county compete in a local cooking contest. GAO JIANHUA/FOR CHINA DAILY

Many residents in Shanxi are being offered the chance to escape poverty and make better money thanks to job-skills training provided by the government and social entities.

Yang Wenwen, from Linxian county, Lyuliang city, in the west of Shanxi, said she is proud to be able to serve clients not only in China but in Japan.

But she was not so confident three years ago. She had been trying to find a job in Lyuliang and was turned down by several employers.

Yang, in her 30s, was then told by friends that there are a number of vocational schools in Lyuliang training nurses. Graduates from these schools are especially welcome in the job market.

Yang entered one of the schools in 2018 and got a nurse's certificate several months later. Later, she attended a local language school to study Japanese. After obtaining a Japanese-language certificate, she became one of the first batch of Lyuliang residents to go and work in Japan.

Yang is one of the beneficiaries of Shanxi's recent campaign to help residents find better jobs by providing them with training.

According to Chen Jie, an official at the Shanxi Department of Human Resources and Social Security, the province launched the campaign in February 2017. It aims to support Shanxi's growth with better human resources and help residents with better career development.

"Our research found that a lack of sufficient, high-quality human resources was one of the major reasons hindering Shanxi's development.

"In 2017, the number of employees with skill certificates only accounted for about 15 percent of the total payroll in Shanxi, nearly 7 percentage points lower than the national average.

"Three years after the campaign began, the ratio increased to 22.4 percent," Chen said.

Chen added that there is training targeting impoverished residents from the countryside, helping them find new jobs to make more money.

During almost four years, Shanxi's organizations have offered training to more than 708,000 rural laborers. Around 474,000 of them have earned various skills certificates.

Even university students are eager to take part.

Li Fuchun, a graduate from a university in Shanxi, found his first job in Guangdong province, South China. He returned to Shanxi to study in a vocational school for agricultural technologies three years ago. Li then established a plantation for tropical fruits in his hometown in Shanxi.

"To many of my friends and neighbors, it was beyond their understanding how a university graduate with a well-paid job in the developed province of Guangdong could return to become a farmer again," Li said.

Li is not a traditional farmer by any means. At the training school, he learned the knowledge and skills to operate a modern farm.

Li said it was his dream to run a modern "tropical orchard" on the Loess Plateau in North China. By using greenhouses and intelligent technologies, it has been possible for him to realize this.

"The adjustment of temperature, moisture and light, and even the movement of greenhouse roof covers－everything can be controlled automatically, just through touching a smartphone screen," Li said.

He said more residents are coming to learn from him as they are aware that farming can also make fortunes.

Li has also run a training school, giving lectures about modern farming.

Wang Pei contributed to this story.

By YUAN SHENGGAO