VietNamNet Bridge – Keeping mobile phones “off”  and escaping from the city’s watch, a lot of learners of the Da Nang City’s Program on training and developing talents have broken the contracts signed with the city’s authorities.

Talents escape, billions of dong in vain

Da Nang City has been well known in the country as the locality pioneering in applying the policies to attract talented persons. It is willing to offer good working conditions, high salaries and free training courses to potential candidates, hoping that they would make great contribution to the city’s development.

Of the 500 learners following the talent training project, 20 tend to stop halfway, while 3 would be sued by the city’s authorities. The figures may be high enough for the city to reconsider its program.

A series of projects on developing human resources have been kicked off since 2004. In 2009, the first learners of the projects, who finished training courses, returned and began working for the city. To date, 207 people have taken works, including 73 people with postgraduate degrees.

Many of the learners sent abroad decided to continue their studies after finishing the assigned training courses. However, most of them do not intent to study on the money paid by the city, but they study with their own money.

In 2010-2012, only 6 learners decided to continue study abroad with the city’s money, while 2/3 of the learners stayed abroad for further studies. Five learners informed they would withdraw from the program, 12 did not have the good learning results as expected.

Especially, six people did not fulfill their duty of working for the city (the learners from foreign schools committed to work for the city for at least 7 years, while the duration is 5 years for the learners at domestic schools).

The city is considering taking legal proceedings against 3 people, who have many times broken the contracts. They kept mobile phones “off” and stayed out of the reach of the city.

One of them is an officer of the city’s science and technology department, who is following a postgraduate course in Australia. His wife and children now live in Da Nang.

In the second case, the woman studied at a university in the US, then continued the training course for master degree in the UK. However, she has got married in the UK and decided not to return to Vietnam.

The city has also lost contract with the third case.

Da Nang determines to take legal proceedings

Of the three cases, two contracts have been guaranteed by the learners’ family members. However, the relatives of the two have been non-cooperative during the negotiations.

According to the High Quality Human Resource Development Center under the Da Nang City People’s Committee, it’s highly possible that the committee would take legal proceedings to claim back the expenses to train the learners. The stipend for a learner in Australia is $1.032 a month, while the sum of money is $1,200 for those in the US, Japan, UK and France.

If counting on the tuitions and other compulsory expenses, such as air tickets, healthcare insurance, visa fee…, the city spent VND600-800 million a year on every learner.

Under the contract signed between the city and the learners, the learners would have to compensate the sums of money five times higher than the expenses, if they don’t return to Vietnam.

Tien Phong