LÂM ĐỒNG — After more than four years of implementation, an ambitious project to enable young people from ethnic minorities to become communal chiefs in the Tây Nguyên (Central Highland) province of Lâm Đồng has not met the desired level of success.

Under the province’s Project 50, young people from the Tây Nguyên ethnic minority will be selected and trained, before being assigned as deputy chairpersons of the people’s committees in remote communes.

Starting from May 2013, 43 young people have received six-month training courses that included skills in management and decision-making, as well as knowledge of the administrative procedures of People’s Committees at the commune level.

However, after four years, only 12 trainees have been recruited as civil servants at communal people’s committees while six have resigned from the project and 25 are working under temporary working contracts. The goal of the project seems to be unreachable.

K’Tựu, 33, was among three young people from Project 50 assigned to work at communes in Lâm Hà District. She graduated from Đà Lạt University’s Teacher Training College in 2009 with a major in history. She started working at Liên Hà Commune’s People’s Committee in 2014.

Two years ago, one of the three had resigned while K’Tựu and another are still working under temporary status at communes.

“The job is not stable with no clear position,” K’Tựu said, “The working contract was signed with the title of administrator, but I have not been assigned specific tasks. I mainly do odd jobs as an intern.”

Explaining K’Tựu’s situation, authorities in Liên Hà Commune said that the commune had enough deputy chairpersons.

Party Secretary of Lâm Hà District, Phạm Thị Phúc said that like K’Tựu, two other members of Project 50 in the district could not found positions as deputy chairpersons of the communal people’s committees because there were no vacancies and the candidates had not shown an outstanding level of skill.

The story is the same in other communes. Since 2003, there have been sufficient numbers of members and deputies at the localities’ people’s committees. They have also used up their assigned staffing quotas, so the placement of full-time civil servants from Project 50 is very difficult.

“In the future, my department will advise the province to work out solutions to overcome constraints and difficulties arising in order to achieve the objectives of Project 50,” said Trần Hồng Quyết, deputy director of Lâm Đồng Province’s Department of Home Affairs.

“Accordingly, outstanding people will be assigned the appropriate position,” he said.

Quyết said that the provincial People’s Committee had agreed to extend labour contracts to 25 members of Project 50, who are working under temporary contracts, by the end of 2018 to create conditions for them to prove their ability and take part in official recruitment. — VNS