Worry of High-tech Manpower

Vietnam has not yet owned any source and core technologies involving in high-tech sector but only mastered some steps or some high-tech factors. High-tech seems to be absent at all economic sectors, which is mainly attributed to human resource shortage and weak practical competence. Vietnam is unable to satisfy minimal labour force demand for Intel to build plants in the country and has not yet trained sufficient personnel to start the first nuclear power project.

 

According to a recent survey on science and technology potential by the Ministry of Science and Technology, almost scientists are old, particularly professors and associate professors are at the age of nearly 60 and the number of scientists who are aged less than 50 accounts for only 12% of the total. The human resource shortfall will be worse when a large number of experts become old and retire. Other elements including weak foreign language skills, lack of knowledge about international communication competence by internal scientists has also been attributed to the negative situation. Only 25% of cadres are able to fluently use English and French. The survey also showed that only half of scientists attended international science and technology meetings and maintained regular contact with international scientist communities. Currently, Vietnam has over 10,000 people with doctorates but few of them meet the international standards.

 

Not only the lack of high-tech human resource but also high-tech labour force training has been a pressing issue in Vietnam. Ms. Le Thi Thanh My, deputy head of the Ho Chi Minh City High-tech Park said all enterprises want to recruit competent employees but in fact only students in the top five postgraduates can satisfy the requirements. Enterprises still have to train other post graduates so as to improve their working competence. The Ministry of Science and Technology said the information technology’s enrolment targets have rocketed in recent three years, to 50,000 people in 2008, up 125% against 2007 and up 160% against 2006. Universities, colleges and vocational training schools train an average of 110,000 IT engineers annually but only 10% of them can work well.

 

Mr. Vo Quang Hue, General Director of Robert Bosch Vietnam said high-tech recruitment is not easy as almost technical labour force lack of practical skills and even experienced people need further training. Recently, Robert Bosch Vietnam recruits 50 experienced staffs to work for the precise engineering project worth EUR55 million (VND1.336 trillion) in Long Thanh Industrial Park in the southern province of Dong Nai but had to send 15 of whom to study in Holland with a total cost of US$30,000-40,000 each.

 

Mr. Le Hoai Quoc, Deputy Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Science and Technology was also worried about the quality of high-tech human resource, and added that the current situation has been earlier warned of. The more inefficient training is, the longer people worry about the quality of human resource.

 

The situation has rung an alarm bell to Vietnam to timely work out high-tech human resource development policies based on the national socioeconomic development strategy. In order to meet the increasing demand for high-tech work force, the nation should strengthen training of high-tech human resources, particularly in communication, information and technology; biotechnology, material technology and automation.

 

Mr. Le Hoai Quoc said the association between enterprises and training institutions is still loose and infirm. One of measures to improve the training quality of high-tech personnel is to build and issue institute statutes in order to intensify the institute-university-enterprise association as well as form a trend of research at universities and scientific institutions, which means that high-tech companies and high-tech parks should set up association with universities to train work force. And in tern, institutes, universities and training centres must tightly collaborate with high-tech institutions in order to assess training quality, adjust training syllabus and update content of curriculums. Nguyen Thanh Tung, Director of the HCM City Export Processing and Industrial Zones Authority (Hepza)’s Employment Service Centre suggested training centres  slash time of theoretic subjects and raise time of practical operations at companies and factories in order to improve trainees’ working skills.     

 

Mr. Quoc emphasized the necessity of supplementing and specifying some policies involving salary, incentives to scientists and financial support to high-tech training.
Thanh Tan