Forty percent of personnel at state-run broadcaster Hanoi Radio Television (Hanoi TV) cannot be laid off despite performing poorly at work because of their family connections, the TV station’s general director To Quang Phan said on Tuesday.

Phan was speaking at a meeting of Party members in the Vietnamese capital city.

According to the director, out of more than 700 people employed by Hanoi TV, only around 60 percent are “capable” of doing their job satisfactorily.

The remaining 40 percent are underperformers who cannot be dismissed because they are “relatives of state and city officials,” Phan said.

These employees display a “lackluster attitude” in the workplace, and regularly check in and out of work without really doing anything helpful in between.

“However, it is very difficult to have them dismissed because they do not commit any violation or pick a fight with anybody,” Phan explained.

Nearly 140 personnel at Hanoi TV are considered “key officials,” which is an astoundingly high number for a local broadcaster, he added.

Many of the officials are PhD holders who are always attending different kinds of professional training courses, but who remain incapable of doing their job well, Phan said.

He called for the local Party organ to improve their selection of officials from lower levels to prevent such impotent personnel from making their way into higher-level state-run bodies later on.

Do Manh Hai, Party chief of Hanoi’s Long Bien District, agreed to Phan’s remarks that many public officials in Vietnam are only pursuing further education using state budgets to add credits to their academic profile, although what they study may not be practically helpful.

Hai suggested formulating a framework to assess officials based on their work efficiency and not academic credentials, and only sponsor education pursuits that are truly necessary for an official’s professional improvement.

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