Clearly understanding the role of cadres and instructors in education and training, over the past years, the Naval Academy’s Party Committee and Board of Directors have taken measures to build this staff’s qualities, capability and prestige, meeting the requirements of its education and training mission.

The Naval Academy is one of the centres for education and research in the Vietnam People’s Army and the Navy. Over the past years, grasping directives and resolutions by the Party, the Central Military Commission, the Ministry of National Defence, and the Navy on the personnel work, the Academy’s Party Committee and Board have taken measures to build a contingent of “both red and expert” cadres and instructors. Focuses have been placed on improving this staff’s political will, morality, sense of discipline, knowledge and fitness as well as building this staff‘s proper quantity and structure, ensuring the inheritance between generations, opportunely meeting the development of the task of the Military and the Navy.

Sr. Col. Chu Ngoc Sang presents awards to individuals in the Party cell secretaries’ contest

Notably, since the issuance of the Resolution of the 8^th Party Central Committee’s 3^rd Plenum on “staff strategy in the period of accelerated national industrialization and modernization”, the Academy’s Party Committee has formulated the personnel plan in line with the personnel plans for party congresses and adjusted and supplemented it on a yearly basis; issued the criteria for job titles of cadres within the Naval Academy” and the procedures for cadre appointment; built the criteria for professional titles in accordance with reality. The personnel planning has been combined with cadre evaluation, training, rotation and use. The Academy has paid due attention to the work of training cadres and instructors via diverse forms and measures; to combining cadre training within the Academy with dispatching cadres to units outside the Academy so that they could gain hands-on experience; to dispatching cadres and instructors to study overseas, particularly cadets, postgraduates, senior-level instructors and top experts. Consideration has been given to appointing young, qualified cadres to the positions of leaders, commanders, managers of units to ensure stability, inheritance and steady development. At the same time, the Academy has asked higher echelons to deploy its cadres and instructors to hold corresponding positions in the units under the Navy to gain hands-on experience and knowledge as the basis for the Academy to more practically, comprehensively evaluate each cadre and instructor. Besides, it has organized delegations working with the units of the Navy to grasp the quality of its cadres and instructors on field mission and receive their opinions about its education and training quality.

On an annual basis, the Academy dispatches 10 to 15 instructors to study and work at the Navy’s units for at least 2 years. Cadre rotation has provided the basis for the Academy’s cadres and instructors to improve their professional competence, hands-on experience, political will, and command and leadership capability as well as to renew the training program to meet the practical demands of the units. The Academy’s Party Committee has paid due regard to the work of recruiting cadres and proactively given recommendations to higher echelons on recruiting several cadres and instructors from universities outside the Military to its faculties. As a result, up to now, the Academy has had a pool of cadres and instructors with sufficient quantity, good quality and proper structure; its cadres and instructors have been appointed to correct positions; there has been an increase in the number of cadres and party members who hold postgraduate degrees; its cadres and instructors possess political will, typical moral qualities and lifestyle, good capability and health, scientific working style in accordance with the particularities of Naval troops.

At present, the Navy is being built to move forward to modernity and provided with many modern weapons and technical equipment, which imposes higher requirements on the Academy’s training and education. Meanwhile, its facilities are limited; there is a dearth of cadres and instructors, particularly high-quality instructors and top experts; young cadres have insufficient hands-on experience; capability, prestige, and responsibility of a number of cadres and instructors are still low. To build a contingent of cadres and instructors to meet the task requirements in the new situation, the Academy’s Party Committee focuses on the following solutions.

It is necessary to grasp resolutions and directives, particularly the Party’s Resolution 26-NQ/TW (12^th tenure) on building a contingent of cadres at all levels, particularly at strategic level with sufficient qualities, capability and prestige, meeting the task requirements, the Central Military Commission’s Resolution 769-NQ/QUTW on building a pool of military cadres between 2013 and 2020 and beyond, the Navy’s Party Committee’s Resolution 4419-NQ/TVĐU on building the human resources to meet the Navy’s task development during the 2010-2020 period, and the Academy’s Party Committee’s Resolution on building a corps of cadres and instructors. Grounded on those documents, grasping the reality and the requirements for cadres and instructors in the new situation, each office and unit should formulate guidelines and measures properly. It is important to proactively review and supplement the regulations on leading the personnel work at all levels; clearly assign the responsibility and authority between party committees and commanders, and between party committee secretaries and heads of the office for the personnel work; closely follow the procedures and regulations on cadre management at each level.

It is essential to foster the work of training cadres in order to improve the all-round quality of cadres and instructors. All-level party committees should continue to review the pool of cadres and instructors to make training plans for improving their knowledge, particularly at postgraduate degree; to train cadres and instructors via teaching and research activities and field missions in units. It is important to proactively select graduates with distinctions and credits and ask the Navy to dispatch them to Naval units for about 2 years, and then deploy them back to the Academy to undertake the teaching task. At the same time, it is essential to select potential young cadres and send them to study at universities both inside and outside the Military and abroad in order to train them to be top cadres of the Academy, particularly in research, teaching and high-level technical majors. Adhering to the Party’s resolutions on training cadres, the Academy should renew and complete the curriculum, especially improve the quality of foreign languages and information technology training for cadres and instructors, combine cadre training with cadre use, and improve their working style. Executing the Central Military Commission’s Resolution  86-NQ/ĐUQSTW and the Navy’s Party Committee’s Resolution 8157/NQĐUQC-NT on education and training in the new situation as well as the Academy’s Party Committee’s Resolution on building cadres and instructors, improving the quality of training and enhancing the foreign language capacity, by 2020, the Academy strives to standardize its contingent of cadres and instructors under the regulations of the Law on Higher Education; 100% of its instructors must hold postgraduate degree, at least 20%-30% of them must hold doctorate and have a high level of proficiency in at least one foreign language.

Significance should be attached to assessing cadres and instructors as the basis for arranging and using them properly. All-level party committees within the Academy should renew the method to evaluate cadres and instructors in an objective, democratic, public, comprehensive manner, while taking the task performance of units as an important criterion for assessing cadres and instructors. Party committees must make an honest evaluation of each cadre and instructor’s task performance and align cadre evaluation with party member evaluation. Due attention should be paid to carrying out the work of inspection and supervision, heightening the responsibility of party committees, promoting the role of commanders in evaluating cadres, taking the implementation of the Resolution of the Party Central Committee’s 4^th Plenum on the Party building and rectification and the 12^th Politburo’s Directive 05-CT/TW on studying and following Ho Chi Minh’s ideology, morality and lifestyle as the basis for the annual evaluation of cadres. There should be measures to rectify cadres’ weaknesses and strictly execute the Central Military Commission’s Regulations 646-QĐ/QUTW on the mode role-setting responsibility of cadres in order to make a huge change in self-improvement of cadres, particularly commanders and managerial cadres at all levels.

Furthermore, it is necessary to perform the work of cadre planning, deployment, appointment and arrangement in a proper, scientific manner. The Academy has required party committees to build and regularly review, adjust and supplement the personnel planning in accordance with reality, ensuring the inheritance and transition between generations of cadres and instructors. It is essential to proactively detect and include young cadres with sufficient qualities, capability and prestige in the planning and settle the dearth of a contingent of all-level cadres, particularly key cadres, good instructors, and top experts. Cadre rotation must be combined with the improved quality and effectiveness of practical operations between the Academy, offices and units. At the same time, it is important to rotate the position of cadres to train and cultivate cadres and especially dispatch cadres and instructors to units of the Navy on field missions. Due attention should be paid to preventing and combating negative phenomena, bribery for job titles, factionalism, partiality, and group interest in the personnel work; resolutely replacing and dismissing cadres and instructors with bad task performance, capability, morality, and lifestyle and low prestige.

Grasping the Party’s resolutions on the personnel work and adopting those above-mentioned solutions will help improve the quality of the Academy’s contingent of cadres and party members, meeting the requirements of its education and training work as well as contribute to building a revolutionary, regular, elite, modern Vietnam People’s Navy to safeguard the Homeland’s sea and island sovereignty.

Sr. Col. Chu Ngoc Sang, Commissar of the Naval Academy