VietNamNet Bridge – Local authorities have been trying to attract talents to their localities by rolling out the red carpet for them and offering high salaries. However, these are not enough to retain talents.

Quang Ngai province’s people received bad news on the last days of 2013: teacher Nguyen Chi Liem of the Le Khiet High School for the Gifted, the only high school teacher with a doctorate, decided to leave Quang Ngai for Da Nang City.

Liem finished the Quy Nhon University of Education in 1993, received the master degree in 2006 and doctorate in 2012. He has been well known as a qualified teacher who deserves credit for discovering and training talented students.

A lot of students trained by Liem reportedly got high prizes at the national mathematics competition for excellent students or math Olympiads.

Liem is the only teacher in Quang Ngai province who can teach math in English. He was the person who founded a movement of teaching and learning math in English at the Le Khiet High School.

In the 2012-2013 academic year, Le Khiet School for the first time sent its students to the national math competition in English for excellent students. Six competitors all won high prizes.

Liem’s great efforts and achievements explain why he has been greatly respected by the Le Khiet School and Quang Ngai’s people.

Tran Dinh Voi, Headmaster of Le Khiet School, said the leave of Khiem would take a heavy toll to the Quang Ngai provincial education.

Voi said Le Khiet School has been trying its best to create most favorable conditions for Khiem to work at the school, however, it still has failed to retain Khiem.

After Khiem successfully defended his doctoral thesis, he received a financial support package of VND10 million from Le Khiet School. Meanwhile, the Quang Ngai provincial authorities and education system kept silent to the school’s proposal to reward Khiem.

Khiem has been determined to leave. “I know that wherever he works, he will also devote himself to the local education development. However, Khiem’s leave should be seen as an alarm for Quang Ngai leaders who make the policies on talents recruitment.

In fact, the provincial authorities have also been making every effort to attract talents to the local agencies.

Every talented person, who agrees to work in Quang Ngai province, receives the financial support of VND100-350 million, depending on their qualification, majoring and academic title. Besides, the local authorities also prop up the house rents for five years.

However, experts comment that the current policies are still not good enough to attract talents as expected by local authorities.

Ninh Thuan province, for example, has seen 45 qualified workers in the healthcare sector leaving the locality since 2006, despite the preferences offered to them.

In 2012, Quang Binh provincial authorities announced the plan of recruiting qualified workers for 84 positions at 14 local agencies, promising attractive preferences to them.

However, after two recruitment campaigns in late 2012 and early 2013, the province could only find 12 workers.

Son noted that the VND100 million in financial support to those with the professorship is too modest to be able to attract talents.

Meanwhile, according to Tran Thuynh, Director of the Quang Binh provincial Finance Department, a lot of the talents still have not become the regular members of the personnel yet, while they still have been working under short term (1-year) labor contracts.

Kim Chi