Chinese top advisor Jia Qinglin underscored Friday in Beijing that vocational education is an effective measure to alleviate the country's employment pressure.

Jia, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), made the remarks when attending a meeting held by the National Association of Vocational Education (NAVE) here Friday, which celebrated its 10th anniversary of launching "the Warmth Project" that helped the unemployed to find jobs through skill training.

Jia spoke highly of the project, which has explored a new way to help the unemployed, both in urban and rural areas, to find jobs and facilitate the western areas and ethnic groups to improve their living conditions.

The employment problem renders a key position in China's social economic development, which has been reiterated in the Fifth Session of the 16th Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee a week ago, Jia said.

Since the NAVE sponsored the project in 1995, it had set up 104 such enforce bodies throughout the country, with approximately 500,000 people undergone training and more than 100,000 employed by the end of 2004.

Source: Xinhua