Nagasaki Prefecture in Japan will begin recruiting first year students from central Vietnam to work and study in healthcare services from 2021.

The Vietnamese students will also receive language lessons, accommodation and long-term employment in Japan in the future.

Director of the Healthcare and Social Welfare Bureau of Nagasaki Nakata Katsumi made the announcement during an online ceremony to mark the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding on human resources training and recruitment between Nagasaki and the Da Nang-based Dong A College on November 20.

It is the seventh city in Japan to sign a recruitment agreement with a college in Da Nang.

“We are very happy and will welcome the first students from central Vietnam to Nagasaki for working and studying. Nagasaki will offer the most favourable conditions and priorities for Vietnamese students with skills training, education and working opportunities,” Nakata Katsumi said after the ceremony.

“Nagasaki and Vietnam has a prolonged historic relationship, and Da Nang is a part of Vietnam that Nagasaki has built very close ties with,” he said, adding that Dong A College and Nagasaki University had previously inked a comprehensive co-operation agreement.

Chairman of Dong A College Council Luong Minh Sam said more than 200 students from the college had already been working in Japan, and at least 500 more students would be sent to Japan next year.

He said the second batch of qualified students in nursery services had been recruited for 18-month contracts at the Kameda medical centre in Chiba Prefecture.

Japanese companies employed nearly 300 students from the college at a recruitment day in September, and those students will be working in different services and industries in Japan for one year.

Partners from Japan and the city-based college previously established the Japanese Culture and Language Exchange Centre in Da Nang to provide education opportunities for 2,000 students in central Vietnam.

Yokohama, Maebashi, Chiba, Fukuoka and Shizuoka and 72 businesses from Japan have also agreed to recruit human resources from central Vietnam.

The college sent representatives to Tokyo to boost education co-operation between central Vietnam and Japan last month.

Dong A College is the only private education centre in central Vietnam supplying human resources for the Japanese labour market.