The government of Haicang district in Xiamen, Fujian province, has been paying increasing attention to the improvement of local people's well-being, including education and healthcare. It has introduced and nurtured high-level personnel by offering policies, investments and platforms, to provide human resources support for social development.
During the past five years, Haicang has made many efforts to enlarge its talent pool in the education and healthcare industries.
It issued two guiding documents on attracting and training high-quality employees in the two sectors in 2013, the first of its kind in the city.
Favorable policies included both economic and personal incentives. Qualified educational and medical employees can receive housing allowances up to 1.7 million yuan ($256,941) and 1.5 million yuan, respectively.
The district provided nearly 5 million yuan in past two years to increase salaries of teachers at privately run schools. It also raised 12 million yuan to set up an educational fund, of which 880,000 yuan was awarded to 24 locally developed high-level educational personnel. Another 60 people who had made outstanding contributions to education also won awards.
To achieve sustainable development of its human resources, Haicang established the first batch of 18 teacher training centers, recruiting 134 college graduates nationwide as interns.
It also built partnerships with several prestigious universities across the country, including Tsinghua University and Fudan University, to provide systematic training to local teachers. The personnel structure has been optimized through such training, with more than 90 percent of the teachers holding bachelor's degrees or above.
As for the healthcare sector, 29 doctors from top-level hospitals work regularly at primary-level hospitals and community health service centers to provide training courses and technological guidance.
In addition to attracting skilled people, Haicang tries to provide better services to ensure they can always find opportunities to display their abilities. The district has established six affiliated schools of universities, including Beijing Normal University and Central China Normal University.
It has invested about 300 million yuan to help Xiamen Haicang Hospital upgrade into one of China's highest-level hospitals, to help Xiamen Chang Gung Hospital buy the province's most advanced medical devices and to carry out 12 medical research projects covering such fields as cochlear implants and plastic surgery.
Xiamen Chang Gung Hospital, the first Taiwan-invested hospital on the Chinese mainland, invited 43 doctors from Taiwan to provide regular, long-term medical services in Haicang.
Thanks to its diverse preferential policies, Haicang has gathered a group of high-quality educational and medical professionals, who are playing an important role in boosting local growth.
The district has been awarded national demonstration zone status in many fields, including educational development, character building of minors, chronic disease prevention and control, and healthcare services provided to women and children.
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