A commercial Vietnamese bank has taken the Internet by surprise for openly announcing it would prioritize the recruitment of people who have the same family name as its chairman.

Applicants with the family name Duong will be preferentially recruited for newly opened district-level branches of LienVietPostBank in provinces and cities across Vietnam, the Hanoi-based lender said in a recent announcement.

The document, released on June 10 and signed by LienVietPostBank chairman Duong Cong Minh, was posted on the official website of the Duong family in Vietnam, but was later removed after being criticized as an unfair recruitment policy.

It is common for established families in Vietnam to have a ‘family council’ to connect and support all family members, cherishing their traditions and paying homage to their ancestors.

Duong Cong Minh is also the deputy chairman of the Council of the Duong family, which explains his policy of granting jobs to familial members.

Minh did not try to deny the controversial announcement.

“However, the policy is only meant to prioritize the recruitment of Duong family members in needy and remote areas for the cash handling positions,” he told newswire VnExpress on Sunday.

A cash handler is in charge of receiving, counting, recording, and transporting or depositing cash money, a position Minh said can “be done well by those with only a high school diploma.”

“Despite this, applicants must have a vocational certificate as a minimum requirement to benefit from the policy,” he added.

Minh told VnExpress that the bank plans to recruit 62 candidates for the position, but “has received no applications since making the announcement.”

A LienVietPostBank executive told VnExpress that there was no such policy for other positions at the bank, and there would be no similar recruitment plan that favors the Duong family in the future.

On Tuesday, LienVietPostBank issued a press release to give its official comment on the issue.

The lender’s spokesman, Nguyen Duc Huong, said Duong Cong Minh did mention the priority recruitment policy, but only as the deputy chairman of the Duong family council, not as the chairman of LienVietPostBank.

“As the LienVietPostBank boss, Duong has withdrawn such a policy, which means the bank now sticks to its recruitment rule, which does not favor members of the Duong family,” Huong said.

LienVietPostBank, formerly known as LienVietBank, was established in March 2008.

The lender now offers banking products and services through its branches across 63 cities and provinces and 10,000 postal transaction offices nationwide, according to its website.

In 2015, another local lender, Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development, better known as Agribank, also made headlines for saying it would give priority to family members of its current employees in a recruitment campaign.

According to an official announcement of Agribank on its website, the biggest Vietnamese lender would add 30 points out of an overall score of 100 for the family members of its employees when they took recruitment tests.

Those family members included sons, daughters, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law or adopted children of Agribank staff who had not had a family member working for the lender previously, according to the announcement.

The policy was also later canceled following negative feedback from the public.

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