Vietnam gets help with English for ASEAN countries
Vietnam gets help with English for ASEAN countries
HANOI (Agencies): Friendly governments are helping Vietnamese officials learn English before the country becomes a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in July, diplomats said yesterday.
The foreign and trade ministries and several other government offices will need hundreds of officials to manage exchanges with ASEAN partners, serve on committees and conduct business in English, the group's working language.
Vietnam will be the seventh member of ASEAN, joining Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.
ASEAN members and some of the group's Western "dialog partners" are helping to train officials specifically for ASEAN membership, diplomats said. Schemes include:
Australia: Twenty senior Vietnamese officials left on Saturday for a three-month intensive English course at the University of Western Australia in Perth.
Britain: Is running five part-time courses in Vietnam for 60 senior officials and expects 150 to attend over the next two to three months. "There is going to be quite a lot of demand for ASEAN-specific language, or bureaucrats," a British Council official said.
Canada: Is funding training in Singapore of 100 to 120 middle- ranking Vietnamese officials over the next two years. About 40 will also be trained in Canada. A special ASEAN library will be given to the Foreign Ministry in Hanoi.
Malaysia: Is training 10 Vietnamese officials in English.
New Zealand: Has trained 30 to 40 Vietnamese officials over the past three or four years "and if anything we'll be looking to do more", an official said.
Singapore: Apart from the scheme with Canada, has trained 10 Vietnamese officials, plans to train 10 more, and is instructing two Vietnamese language teachers in Singapore to run classes back in Vietnam.
Thousands of Vietnamese officials, students and business executives are already learning English as the main international commercial language now that the communist country has opened its economy to foreign investment.
Some older officials speak French as a second language, which they learnt when Vietnam was a French colony, before 1954. It is a member of the French-speaking commonwealth, La Francophonie, and front-runner to host its 1997 summit.
Many Vietnamese officials speak Russian or East European languages which they learned in the defunct Soviet-led communist network.
Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet told middle-level and senior officials last August that they had to learn at least one foreign language, preferably English, if they wanted promotion and assignments abroad.
Meanwhile, Vietnam's entry into the ASEAN would strengthen the group in checking threats to regional peace such as China's moves in the disputed Spratly Islands, a Philippine senator said yesterday.
Senator Ernesto Herrera said the Philippines should lead the campaign for Vietnam's entry in ASEAN, which groups Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore.
Vietnam is now an ASEAN observer, a step before full membership.
He noted in a statement that Vietnam has "strong non-aligned and independent foreign policy" and large standing armed forces and that its membership in ASEAN would beef up the regional grouping.