Eight thousand festivals and labor productivity is at the bottom of the region

Vietnam has the "champion" number of festivals in a year but is at the bottom of the region in terms of labor productivity.

Dozens of festivals every day

According to statistics from the Department of Grassroots Culture (Ministry of Culture - Sports and Tourism), our country currently has 7,966 festivals held each year, including 7,039 folk festivals, 544 religious festivals, 322 revolutionary historical festivals...

Based on this number, on average there are about 21 festivals a day in Vietnam.

Vietnam ranks first in the world in the number of festivals. Illustration photo: dantri.com

From the perspective of labor and employment, if you participate in a festival, you will have to temporarily neglect your professional work. If we think in a normal way, every day in our country there are tens of thousands of people who just play and do nothing. If we multiply it by the number of working hours, there is a large number of working hours that are not used for the right purpose.

For example, the opening day of the Huong Pagoda Festival attracted about 6,000 participants even though it was the first day that agencies and offices returned to work after the Tet holiday. On the same day, the Bai Dinh Pagoda Festival (Ninh Binh) also opened, attracting thousands of people, although there were no specific statistics. A sea of ​​people flocked to the Lim Festival on the opening day even though it was still a working day. It is normal for such famous festivals to have thousands of participants every day.

Therefore, it is not difficult to explain why industrial parks are empty of workers after Tet because many workers still linger in their hometowns to attend festivals. Many bosses have a headache because it takes until the end of January for ordinary workers to return to work because they are busy going to festivals. Many offices are also empty of workers because of the bustling "spring outing" groups, putting work aside to have fun first!

According to experts, in Vietnam, festivals mainly take place in Spring and Autumn, the seasons of leisure and idle farming. In addition to spiritual and religious factors, these are also the seasons when farmers have the most free time in the year when the planting season has just passed. Therefore, they participate in festivals. The long-standing custom of seasonal agricultural production is still strong even though this is the 21st century and our country is determined to become an industrialized country by 2020.

And the story of labor productivity

Although Mr. Malte Luebker, a senior expert of the International Labor Organization in Asia-Pacific, once explained that "a country's labor productivity hardly reflects the diligence and ability of its workers", there still seems to be a close connection between the habit of partying during the off-season and labor productivity. Especially when the story of Vietnam's labor productivity being among the lowest in the region is still hot on forums.

Vietnam is in the bottom group in the region in terms of labor productivity. Illustration photo: baodatviet.

Nearly eight thousand festivals were born from agricultural production practices and are still maintained today as proof that leisurely farming habits have not been eliminated.

Looking at today's labor productivity, it has been proven that the higher the proportion of labor working in the agricultural sector in a country, the lower the labor productivity. Mr. Malte Luebker affirmed that in countries such as Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, a large part of the labor force is still working in the agricultural sector, so the overall labor productivity is lower than other countries in the region.

Similarly, countries with a large proportion of workers employed in the informal economy, where workers often lack access to the latest or most modern technologies, have low overall labor productivity.

Although it does not reflect the diligence of workers, it is clear that low labor productivity is also the result of working habits that follow the habit of partying during the off-season and poor labor discipline.

Ignoring the worries of their bosses, workers are willing to take time off work to go out and have fun. Ignoring the piles of work, office workers still skip work to go to festivals and ceremonies. Although the level of work completion has not been measured in absolute monetary terms, playing more than working creates less wealth for society, so labor productivity, which is calculated by the number of products (GDP) created per unit of labor (or per hour of labor), can hardly be high.

Therefore, sense of responsibility/ punctuality and reliability are the most lacking skills of Vietnamese workers - according to the results of a survey on labor skills shortage in foreign-invested enterprises published by the Institute of Labor Science and Social Affairs in 2014. Labor productivity does not reflect much of the level of workers, but it is clear that labor productivity can hardly be high when a country's human resources lack a sense of responsibility, are unreliable and are not punctual - qualities that workers need in an industrial society.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) believes that, at a broader level, labor productivity reflects the economic structure of a country. A recent report by the ILO and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) shows that labor productivity in manufacturing and high-end services is much higher than in agriculture. Thus, with nearly 70% of the population still working in agriculture and the influence of seasonal agriculture (with little adjustment based on scientific and technological achievements) still strong on people's spiritual life, most clearly manifested in the existence of nearly eight thousand festivals a year, it will be difficult to dream of a rapid improvement in labor productivity.

According to Vietnamnet