Vice Chairwoman Pham Thi Nhung of the Union of Vietnamese Associations in Japan shared that the high-quality Vietnamese laborers now have more chances to work in key positions of assembly lines or even management roles in small and medium-scale Japanese companies.
They are highly appreciated by the local and are able to contribute much when returning to their fatherland, especially to HCMC and neighboring localities. They are a useful bridge to connect between the two countries and foster the establishment of a representative office of Japanese enterprises in HCMC, where key industrial clusters are sited.
The Union of Vietnamese Associations in Japan has so far been able to create cooperation channels with Japanese educational institutes for human resources training in HCMC and its neighboring provinces.
The Vietnam-Japan Association of Entrepreneurship (E-Future) has a network for Vietnamese businesses to approach capital sources from Japan. It is confident in its role to link businesses of both countries, to help Japanese companies and investment funds to enter the Vietnamese market successfully.
HCMC is suggested to organize more communication channels between investment funds and domestic enterprises; to introduce suitable mechanisms to promote business exchanges, including conferences, forums, and training programs, for a more sustainable partnership.
In the forum, participants discussed inadequacies and trouble in encouraging overseas Vietnamese to return to their fatherland and contribute more to HCMC.
Deputy Ambassador Nguyen Thuy Hong of the Vietnamese Embassy in the US shared that one typical challenge is that there is not yet any formal network for the overseas Vietnamese in the US. In addition, many intellectuals are still prejudiced against their homeland, whereas young ones are at the first stage of forming an official network overseas, leading to possible inflexibility or inconsistency.
Meanwhile, working conditions and offered benefits in Vietnam are not attractive enough for overseas Vietnamese to come back home to work. When working in their fatherland, many of these people are assigned to separated projects or fields and cannot join force to help the development of the locality they are on duty.
Deputy Ambassador Nguyen Thuy Hong proposed that relevant central state agencies and the HCMC leaders consider a more breakthrough solution which can receive, process, and then implement sensible ideas of overseas Vietnamese experts, businesspeople, and intellectuals.
Monitoring the adoption of Resolution 98 in HCMC right at the beginning, Peter Hong – Chairman of the Business Association of Overseas Vietnamese – stated that he has always yearned to contribute more to his fatherland, especially to HCMC. However, he discovered that there are still several problems in the implementation of this Resolution due to a lack of corresponding mechanisms. That leads to his suggestion for the Central Government to help HCMC to urgently address this.
In response, Vice Chairman Nguyen Manh Dong of the State Committee for Overseas Vietnamese admitted that there is a huge potential of help from the overseas Vietnamese intellectual and business communities. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a database of these people according to their own strengths so that these people can better contribute to the national development.
In the conclusion speech, Chairwoman of the HCMC Committee for Overseas Vietnamese Vu Thi Huynh Mai welcomed all useful opinions of participants for consideration before her organization can submit a corresponding report with suitable solutions to the HCMC People’s Committee, particularly about the implementation of Resolution 98.
She promised to be more active in connecting to representative agencies of overseas Vietnamese people in order to offer more chances for these people to help the national growth. Meanwhile, her organization will review any inadequate policies and mechanisms in HCMC as to attracting experts and scientists to HCMC; encouraging the human resources having learnt in other countries to return to Vietnam; and to attract more investments from overseas Vietnamese via meaningful projects in the city.
With respect to establishing a database of overseas Vietnamese, she informed that at present, HCMC is home to 2.8 million such people from 130 nations and territories. Yet the city has no official data about the fields that these people are working in. Hence, this database development is a driving force to gather overseas Vietnamese in all countries and territories so that each group can play their role in supporting the city when needed.
