Railway human resources concerns

Railway human resources, especially highly skilled technical workers, are in serious shortage. Although businesses are willing to pay high salaries, the problem of recruitment and training has yet to find a solution.

For about a month now, Mr. Dinh Van Th., General Director of a fairly famous bridge construction company in Hanoi, has been busy contacting construction vocational colleges across the three regions. The company currently has more than 500 engineers and technicians and needs to immediately recruit 300-500 bridge workers to have time to practice and gain more “real-life” experience, preparing to participate in the construction of the high-speed railway project on the North-South axis, expected to start in about 18 months.

10 - 15 years ago, bridge technicians were often trained from two sources: colleges under functional ministries and the technical worker school system of traffic construction corporations (CIENCO).

After the CIENCOs were equitized, most of the technical worker schools were dissolved, so the whole country only had a few vocational colleges interested in training bridge workers. However, due to the nature of this profession, which is hard work, often away from home..., the recruitment of vocational colleges is very difficult, each 2-year training course only produces a few hundred technical workers.

Therefore, despite seeking out schools and being willing to pay high salaries for staff, Mr. Th.’s company has only been able to recruit a few dozen students. The recruitment situation will become increasingly difficult as other transport construction contractors also begin to make large investments in human resources and equipment to move towards the project of the century – the high-speed railway on the North-South axis.

It is known that the high-speed railway on the North-South axis has at least 65% of the route length (1,541 km) running on high ground, through the viaduct system, requiring a large number of bridge workers with skills from level 4 and above, up to 20,000 - 30,000 people. With the current training work, the risk of shortage of technical workers, especially bridge and tunnel technicians, is very clear, especially when urban railway projects in Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi and high-speed railway on the North-South axis are deployed simultaneously in the next 2-3 years.

Railway projects, especially high-speed railways, are complex and require high levels of technology, engineering and investment scale. According to international experience, the construction of high-speed railway systems is implemented simultaneously with systematic training and development of human resources early on, at least 3-4 years before the project starts. Meanwhile, up to now, railway human resources only account for about 3% of the total human resources in the transport sector and there has been no change in both quality and quantity.

Even in the field of state management, the size of the staff is also assessed as not commensurate with the scale and increasing requirements of railway management. Currently, the whole country has only 112 staff members undertaking state management functions nationwide. The proportion of young staff under 40 years old is still low (accounting for 16%), indicating a risk of shortage of successor human resources in the near future.

In the construction investment sector, the railway consulting team, due to many years of no projects, has seriously deteriorated. The consulting force used to be very strong with professional units (such as the Railway Design Research Institute) now has only about 10 units capable of participating in consulting on railway projects.

Many consulting firms have shifted to multidisciplinary areas, leading to a shortage of experts with in-depth experience in railways. Domestic contractors are currently mainly familiar with traditional railway projects and do not have the capacity to independently implement modern, complex projects such as high-speed railways.

It is known that to solve the problem of railway human resources, the Ministry of Construction has just submitted to the Government for approval the Project on Developing Vietnam Railway Human Resources to 2030, with a vision to 2045, with many specific mechanisms and policies to soon form a synchronous railway human resource team with professional qualifications, vocational skills, and high technological capacity.

In the context that there is not much time left to prepare for the commencement of major railway projects, the urgent requirement now is to prioritize the allocation of resources to train human resources for railway construction, especially construction engineers and railway technical workers. The mechanism to promote cooperation between the State - schools - enterprises; building mechanisms and models of public-private partnership to combine state budget resources and private sector capital through ordering training and developing railway human resources is expected to be the key to solving this problem.

This is also the desire of most enterprises building transport infrastructure, because having enough quality human resources not only helps ensure the progress and quality of projects, but also determines the success in the process of receiving and mastering technology, improving national competitiveness, contributing to promoting the development of a modern, autonomous and sustainable railway industry.

Source: https://baodautu.vn/noi-lo-nhan-luc-duong-sat-d328926.html