The WorldSkills championships for vocational skills are upcoming and this year it takes place in Russia. The organisers of WorldSkills aim to show the importance of technical and vocational education and training (TVET), as well as continuous further skills development. Participants from all over the world compete in more than 50 professional disciplines. One of the disciplines is “Water Technology”. Viet Nam sends the highly motivated and well-trained Nguyen Thai Phuong, who ranked first in the national competition that took place in November 2018 at Ho-Chi-Minh Vocational College of Technology II. In August this year, Phuong will fly with his trainer Nguyen Xuan Thanh Nam to Kazan, Russia, to demonstrate his skills, to compete with participants from several other countries and to represent Vietnam in this highly important environmental profession.

The international competitors will demonstrate their skills and capabilities in different sub-disciplines of “Water Technology”: water analytics; measurement, control and regulation technology; auxiliary-equipment maintenance; and wastewater treatment plant control. Besides technical expertise, dexterity, rapidity and the ability to work in a team also play an important role.

Smooth processes in waste water disposal can only be guaranteed if the workers behind these processes are well trained. This requires a well-structured and modern training concept. In October last year the first cohort of trainees graduated from a new cooperative training programme for “Sewage Engineering Technicians” at the Vocational College of Technology II in Ho-Chi-Minh City. The Project “Reform of TVET in Viet Nam” in cooperation with the Directorate for Vocational Education and Training (DVET) and the Vietnamese Water Supply and Sewerage Association (VWSA) supported the establishment of the new training programme that is based on international standards.  The project is financed by the German Government and implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and other partners from Germany.

The quality of vocational education and training “made in Germany”, used as a blueprint for the training of the sewage engineering technicians in Vietnam, was a precondition for the experts now representing Viet Nam in the competition. The newly developed training programme for “Sewage Engineering Technicians”, will be offered not only by HVCT, but also at other colleges in the country soon.

But for now, we are just saying: Let’s go to Kazan and show the world what the Vietnamese technicians for sewage engineering have learned in the past three years.

The activity is held within the Vietnamese-German Programme, Reform of TVET in Viet Nam. It is financed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) together with the Vietnamese Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA).