(VEN) - Despite significant numbers of clean production consultants, quality has yet to meet the demand. Regarding this issue, Vietnam Economic News' reporter Phuong Lan - Thu Huong spoke with Tran An, senior consultant of EPRO Consulting Joint Stock Company which is providing clean production consultants to the Cleaner Production in Industry (CPI) Component under the Ministry of Industry and Trade.
What is your evaluation of Vietnam's cleaner production consultants?
10 years ago, the cleaner production consultant training program was launched with the assistance of NGOs and other international organizations. In 1998, the Vietnam Clean Production Center was established at Hanoi's University of Technology. The center carried out a number of training programs. Recently, EPRO has trained many consultants for CPI.
In my opinion, there are a lot of these consultants at current. However, even after attending the training courses, numerous participants do not work as consultants. Additionally, there are only a small number of qualified consultants comparable to foreign consultants.
Why do you think this is the situation?
The main reason is that after the courses, participants do not have many opportunities to work as consultants. They often work at supporting business projects rather than supply clean production services for businesses. Most Vietnamese businesses are small or medium-sized. They are not aware of the importance of environmental issues and energy conservation. In addition, the business directors have the wrong conception of a consultant. They think that consultants have to know everything. In reality, consultants can only propose solutions; they can not help businesses do everything. Moreover, there is a big gap between businesses and consultants. Businesses think all they have to do is pay money to consultants and they will do every thing for them. However, consultants need sufficient information to act, and businesses fail to provide this. In fact, strong cooperation between businesses and consultants is very essential in cleaner production. Without good cooperation, businesses will not achieve positive results.
Recently, a common situation among cleaner production businesses is that when projects are running under the eye of the consultant, businesses achieve marked success. However, once the consultants leave, they again return to mediocrity. In your eyes, what are potential solutions to this problem and can you more specifically define the role of a consultant?
The principle of cleaner production is expressed in the name, which means continuous improvement. Solutions are not to be applied for a certain time and then stopped. Success requires efforts from all parties. Businesses must be conscious of the role of people who implement cleaner production. Consultants must meet market demand. I often use the example of a specific business which implemented a cleaner production project. At first, their results were very impressive. Two years later, without the assistance of a consultant, they had regressed considerably. The responsibility of a consultant is to provide solutions. Also importantly, high-quality solutions require very capable consultants.
It is very important to have well-trained and capable consultants to achieve cleaner production. In reality, many businesses complain about the weaknesses of consulting staff who do not meet their need. Thus, what are possible measures to improve consultants' quality?
One reason is the inequitable distribution of consultants. They mostly work in Hanoi and HCM City. Consultants will be assigned to work in other provinces only when necessary. In reality, after a training course, many of the participants, even those who are very skilled, cannot start work immediately. It takes about three years to gather the practical experience in order to work in all fields. Therefore, we are thinking of a network where consultants can exchange information and experiences to thereby help each other. It is not necessary or efficient for businesses to retain consultants for the long-term because of the cost. Well-trained and experienced consultants can support local consultants in working with businesses. A network among consultants is very helpful in this case.
In particular, I think the most important factor for a good consultant is the market. An active and strong market requires consultants to develop more skills to meet the demand. At present, only foreign projects need consultants. Our statistics show that one-third of consultants who graduated from our training courses work within the context of training, assessing and consulting in cleaner production businesses. Other consultants work in governmental departments rather than cleaner production. The weak market creates obstacles for consultants to develop their quality and skills./.
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