She missed her young and energetic team and couldn’t wait to put her newly acquired skills to good use.

It was her drive and enthusiasm that earned her a full scholarship enabling her to study at one of the world’s top universities.

But the young woman was so disillusioned with public office that she left the ministry in 2007 three years after returning from England.

She said that she could have put up with a monthly salary of only VND1.5 million (US$80), but was forced to leave because of the apathetic working environment. Instead of encouraging high standards of service, she was expected only to produce mediocre work.

She also had a low weekly work load, which she usually finished in a day. To kill time she played computer games during office hours.

Chi, who now earns US$5,000 a month as a freelance researcher and director of her own consultancy, said she would have stayed on the ministry, even at the cost of having to take on outside work to make ends meet, if her work had been appreciated.

Tran Anh Tuan, director of the Ministry of Home Affairs’ Civil Servants Department, admitted that there were many people like Chi who had abandoned public service for the private sector, which offers better pay and promotion prospects.

Fortunately, the Government has acted swiftly to end the crippling brain drain. Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has initiated a scheme to encourage talented people to work in the public sector after hearing that more than 16,000 State employees and officials had quit their jobs between 2003 and 2007.

Those who had resigned include 310 junior and senior managers, such as Luong Van Ly, who was then deputy director of the HCM City Department of Planning and Investment, and Kieu Huu Dung, a former director of the State Bank of Viet Nam’s Department of Banks and Non-Banking Institutions.

In the pipeline

A scheme to halt the brain drain will be submitted to the Prime Minister in October.

Tuan, director of the Civil Servants Department – the body overseeing the drafting process – said the plan would address critical problems in the public sector.

"This will be the first comprehensive guide with specific goals and actions to encourage competent people to work in public service," he said. It would create more opportunities for advancement and promotion and encourage a more competitive working environment, he added.

The programme is being eagerly anticipated by people working in the State sector and also others who have already left.

Chi agrees that a more positive and transparent working environment together with capable team leaders is vital to inspiring and attracting talented staff. As a liaison officer at the Department of International Relations, she used to enjoy working at the labour ministry and was happy with her manager.

"I often had to come up with independent ideas for new projects. My manager put a lot of trust in me and at the age of 23, I was allowed to join some high-ranking international negotiations," Chi said.

Nguyen Quynh Anh, who now works as a fund raising manager for a non-governmental organisation after quitting a State-owned company, says she expects the new brain drain scheme to incorporate a quality assessment and dismissal programme.

After 10 years, Anh said she was totally fed up with the egalitarian system that rewarded hard and indifferent work equally. State enterprises lacked a strong management structure and offered little in the way of career development, she said.

Her view is also supported by research on the public sector carried out by the National Academy of Public Administration last year. The research surveyed 500 civil servants and found the main reasons workers left Government agencies were poor pay, lack of incentives and few opportunities to advance their careers. Those that stayed said they did so mainly for job security.

Director of the Civil Servants Department, Tuan, agreed that there were problems in some but not all State organisations.

"The working environment in Vietnam is not yet up to the industrialised labour model applied in developed countries. Building an effective working environment in Vietnam depends a lot on handling personal matters and personal relations at work.

"And it will take Vietnam at least a hundred years to digest industrial ideology at work, given its small and scattered production background," he said.

No major pay rises

In addition, he says the trail-blazing scheme won’t result in any major pay rises. "When choosing to work for the public sector, the majority of employees don’t have money as their primary subjective because they are well aware that no matter how much change the Government is striving for, State employees’ pay is never going to be very high."

But there will be new policies introduced to ensure that better performing employees are paid more.

Director of the Institute for State Organisation Tran Anh Tuan, who heads the drafting board, says that the new scheme will concentrate on working out ways of getting the right people for the right jobs.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has welcomed the Government’s labour plan. The UNDP said reforms in the Vietnamese civil service over the next 10 years should be based on integrated human resources management and a development framework underpinned by the principles of merit, performance and objectivity.

According to the authors, getting the staff appraisal system right and making it effective in assessing actual performance is a critical first step. But whether the new scheme works well or not remains unclear as pay is a major consideration for employees.

Financial expert Bui Trong Nghia, who was trained in Scotland, quit the Ministry of Finance for a salary 15 times higher, offered by an international economics organisation. In another case, Nguyen Thanh Hang, who earned a masters degree from New York University, left her State enterprise employer to be a manager for a foreign invested company.

"I’d worked hard and enthusiastically in exchange for next to nothing financially for 12 years. Now I earn a good salary and receive a proper insurance package that helps me see a clearer future," she said.