In a proposal submitted to the city, the metro operator, the HCMC Management Authority for Urban Railways (MAUR), said it has agreed with the metro consultancy, NJPT, a consortium led by Japan's Nippon Koei, that the chief expert would be paid 2.5 million yen a month and the rest 2.35 million yen.

It said these are the lowest salaries for the jobs as set in the contract.

They are comparable with the salaries agreed for the mass rapid transit project in Jakarta, it said.

Vietnamese experts involved in training engineers will be paid differently, but the details have not been disclosed.

In January a school that was training 58 engineers for the metro announced it had put the course on hold citing non-payment of its fees by MAUR.

The 15-month training, at Hanoi's Vietnam Railway College in collaboration with NJPT, had begun last July. The trainees, including one woman, are aged 21-35.

It appears that payments to teachers and the school can only be made if appendix No.19 to a 2007 contract between MAUR and NJPT is signed, and that requires the city to approve the engineers’ salaries.

The contract envisaged completion of the line in 2015.

Numerous setbacks that caused delays have pushed the project’s completion to next year.

The long delay also forced the two parties to add 19 appendixes to the contract.

The 19.7-kilometer route from Ben Thanh Market in District 1 to Suoi Tien Theme Park in District 9 will have 17 Japanese-made trains operating.

To cost VND43.7 trillion ($1.89 billion), it has seen 82 percent of the work completed against a targeted 85 percent.

MAUR has blamed the delay on Japanese and European engineers installing the tracks being unable to enter Vietnam last year after international flights were suspended due to the Covid-19 pandemic.