Civil servants in Ho Chi Minh City are only meeting 60 percent of their work requirements, despite their training costs over the last four years of up to 17,000 billion ($895 million) per year, both at home and abroad, reported the city Department of Interior.

“Our surveys show that a majority of civil servants in official agencies have reported that they have been trained, but only a modest proportion of them meet their work requirements,” Diep Van Son, an expert in administrative reform, said.

Thirty percent of all civil servants were still unqualified with most of those at commune level, the department said.

The problem was undermining the city’s efforts in administrative reforms, since the human factor plays the vital role, the department warned.

Officials (right-hand side) at Ward 5 People’s Committee, Tan Binh District, meet locals. (File photo: SGGP)

To keep pace with development, the workload has increased, but civil servants spend so much time in meetings they struggle to find time to plan at a macro level, Mr. Son said.

Many cadres with high seniority and a lot of experience lack practical skills to work in a modern and dynamic working environment, he said.

In District 5 and Binh Chanh and Hoc Mon District, and in agencies like Department of Planning and Investment and the Health Department, most civil servant training courses were not diverse enough, with the main focus on foreign language and computer science, he commented.

Moreover, the training quality is poor, putting more emphasis on the qualification than on real ability, he said.

Professors from the School of Cadres of HCM City, HCM City Economics University, and HCM City National University, said training programs at many universities lacked practical applications and applied subjects, while political training accounted for most of the curricula.

One cadre’s training center estimated that just 10 percent of graduates could meet their work requirement.

Asked about the educational quality in the city, an official at the Department of Education and Training said: “I have a feeling that training is just aimed at formalistic standardization of cadres or at helping them to meet requirements for promotion or pay rise…”

To improve training quality, Le Hoai Trung, deputy director of the Department of Interior, said: “First of all, we have to renovate training programs and teaching methods. Training courses must be designed for each line of business and for specific group of trainees, based on their occupation and professional levels.”

For instance, courses for managers or executive officers must focus on such fields as management skills, negotiation skills, strategic thinking, public relations; while training for civil servants must include teamwork skills, time management and work organization.

Dr. Nguyen Khac Hung, head of the support group for the city’s administrative reform project, said the demand for highly-skilled civil servants has become an urgent issue, since the city has grown quickly and expanded international economic integration.

The city must train a dynamic and professional workforce, including civil servants, in every field, as soon as possible, if it is to meet its development needs, he said.

The city should also set standards on qualifications and requirements for every position so that training courses could be more specialized and practical, he proposed.