The policy of attracting experts and scientists was first implemented by Ho Chi Minh City in 2004 when it established the Biotechnology Center, gathering many overseas Vietnamese and leading experts to help. After 20 years, new policies continued to be introduced in 2013 according to the conclusion of the Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee and in 2018 according to Resolution 20/2018 of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Council. However, in the past 5 years, Ho Chi Minh City has only invited 5 experts and scientists to work for the High-Tech Park Management Board.
Besides the 3 new welfare policies, many opinions say that Ho Chi Minh City needs to focus on the working environment to retain talented people.
N IDENTIFYING THE DEFECTS
According to the assessment of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Home Affairs, one of the subjective reasons is that the policy is not attractive enough, and the income compensation is not competitive.
Accordingly, experts are initially supported with 100 million VND, an incentive allowance of 1% of the cost for each research project, and a maximum rent of 7 million VND/month. Monthly salary is calculated based on the basic salary multiplied by the coefficient of the senior expert salary table. With a basic salary of 1.8 million VND/month, experts only receive 15.8 - 16.9 million VND/month. This income level after deducting social insurance contributions is only 3 times the regional minimum wage (HCMC is 4.68 million VND/month).
Specialist of Ho Chi Minh City Biotechnology Center in the laboratory
The treatment policy of each subject according to Resolution 20/2018 also has a big difference when people with special talents are supported with monthly living expenses from 30 - 50 million VND. Thus, the monthly income of experts and scientists is only equivalent to 56% of the income of people with special talents. This difference leads to comparison, making the attraction policy inconsistent.
As a result, the units registered and the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee posted notices on mass media, but the number of participants was very limited. As for the position of person with special talent, even though it received the highest salary, there was no one registered.
If 20 years ago, Ho Chi Minh City was the pioneer in attracting talents, now many provinces and cities such as Hai Phong, Can Tho ... have also built their own attraction policies according to specific mechanisms. The Department of Home Affairs believes that if policies are not adjusted in time, Ho Chi Minh City will face a lot of pressure in competing to attract talents, affecting its role as a leading locality in converging and promoting high-quality human resources.
Ho Chi Minh City pays 120 million VND salary to attract and retain talented people
According to the Department of Home Affairs, the resolutions of the Central Government and Ho Chi Minh City set very high goals, many projects and programs need to attract many experts and scientists such as the project of the Eastern creative and highly interactive urban area; building an international financial center; building Can Gio international transit port; Ring Road 4... Therefore, the attraction policy is not only for immediate goals but also must be predictive, creating a foundation to welcome a highly qualified workforce by 2025 and the following years.
Attention should be paid to the working environment to retain talented people.
INCREASE TREATMENT
Currently, Ho Chi Minh City is applying 3 policies to attract talented people. Of which, the policy to attract experts, scientists and people with special talents according to Resolution 20/2018 of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Council has attracted 5 people in 5 years. The policy to attract excellent graduates and young scientists according to Decree 140/2017 of the Government has not attracted anyone in 5 years. Recently, the Ho Chi Minh City People's Council approved a new policy, applied to leaders and managers at science and technology organizations, with a monthly salary of 60 - 120 million VND.
According to Thanh Nien 's research, the Department of Home Affairs is developing a new remuneration policy for two groups of people: experts, scientists, people with special talents, and excellent students and young scientists. Priority is given to resolving the inadequacies in salary policies, ensuring income levels commensurate with the labor, intelligence and capacity of talented people. In the draft resolution, the scope of application of the policy is expanded, not only to departments and public service units under the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee but also to the People's Committees of 21 districts and Thu Duc City.
Regarding the level of treatment, the Department of Home Affairs proposed to increase the monthly income level, and at the same time not stipulate different income levels among subjects. Accordingly, the unified monthly income is from 30 to 100 million VND. In addition, the drafting agency also proposed to adjust the level of encouragement for scientific research, promoting intellectual capacity, and developing technology from 1 to 5% of the total budget for that project, the lowest is 50 million VND/person and the highest is 1 billion VND/person. The draft resolution also adds a provision to apply the policy of attracting and treating individuals with projects, topics, works, and products that meet the requirements set by Ho Chi Minh City in the form of "ordering".
Dr. Nguyen Thi Phuong, Deputy Director of the National Academy of Public Administration in Ho Chi Minh City, shared that for people with special talents, sometimes income is not an important issue for them. Instead, they are more concerned about the working environment, and they are afraid that the working mechanism will affect their ability to develop their capacity. Therefore, the new policy needs to focus on the working environment to retain them, so that they can work part-time in each program, project, plan or specific task instead of being assigned to a certain agency of the city.
NEED FLEXIBILITY AND PROACTIVENESS
Dr. Phuong cited that when working with localities, there is a situation of comparison between attracted talents and ordinary civil servants, due to the large income difference between the two groups. This leads to lack of cooperation and low work efficiency. According to Dr. Phuong, when attracting experts, it is necessary to raise the issue of fairness. Because for experts with special talents, a monthly salary of 100 - 200 million VND may not be anything, but for the budget, it is a large amount of money, equal to the monthly salary fund of a normal agency. Thus, there must be a clear and fair mechanism to evaluate the work efficiency of experts with the amount of funding received.
Dr. Nguyen Hai An, Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Biotechnology Center, assessed that the attraction policy that the Department of Home Affairs is building is truly groundbreaking, but there are two issues that need further consideration. First is the attraction procedure, requiring experts to submit documents, set up an evaluation board, and conduct interviews, which sometimes touches the ego and personal self-esteem of experts, so few people accept it. As for the procedure, the current top-down selection method is based on the research needs of the ordering agency, then Ho Chi Minh City recruits and allocates, which may lead to a "phase difference" between the needs and the people selected.
"More than anyone else, the center knows what it needs and who it needs. Therefore, it is necessary to create a proactive environment for the beneficiary unit to select, negotiate, and take responsibility for the quality of the experts," Mr. An suggested.
Second, the salary from 30 - 100 million/month is not attractive enough for truly good experts. Because according to Dr. An, talented people may not be rich, not for money but want to affirm their personal brand through the salary. Not to mention, receiving 1 - 5% of the total budget allocated for topics and projects is also very difficult to quantify the results of scientific research tasks, intellectual property, commercialization to reward experts.
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