Mekong Institute (MI) and the Thailand International Cooperation Agency (TICA) rolled out an online regional workshop to shore public-private sector engagement in strengthening the employability of the Cambodian, Lao PDR, Myanmar, and Vietnamese (CLMV) workforce.  

Designed to foster a policy consultation culture, MI and TICA converged 46 representatives from business groups and non-governmental organizations to pool findings and recommendations on enhancing CLMV skills development institutes and aligning their programs to meet the needs of prospective Thai investors.

Specifically, presentations and discussions from June 21 to 22 focused on deepening relations between the public and private sector by underscoring the merits of cooperative engagement with skills development institutes, deepening support to boost the employability of the labor force in special economic zones and high investment areas in CLMV countries, as well as outlining the long-term gains of benchmarking quality standards of skill development institutes in the region.

The training was an offshoot from the national peer-to-peer learning programs completed by MI and TICA in December 2020, where CLMV representatives forwarded best practices and lessons learned to help enhance the programs of the ministries of labor and education, universities, think tanks, and industrial and employer-employee associations, and the curricula of Technical and Vocational Education and Training institutes in meeting the shifting demands of the GMS labor market.

This is the third activity under the “Improving Institutional Capacities for Promoting Employability in the Greater Mekong Subregion” project.