Ministry of Interior talks about government apparatus that keeps 'squeezing the top and swelling the bottom'

The streamlining of the cumbersome apparatus has long been in the form of "squeezing the top makes the bottom swell", not truly streamlining.

On the afternoon of May 25, discussing the socio-economic situation in groups, National Assembly delegate Le Thanh Van said that over the past years, the Government has carried out administrative reforms but the results have not been positive. The apparatus is too cumbersome, leading to too much regular expenditure, while the quality of officials is difficult to measure.

Descendants, kinship dominate

According to Delegate Le Thanh Van (Ca Mau Delegation), the Ministry of Home Affairs has authorized partially autonomous public service units, authorized the Provincial Chairman and Ministers of ministries to approve the job position project, to streamline the apparatus, and reduce the number of focal points. However, it has not been implemented yet.

National Assembly Delegate Le Thanh Van (Ca Mau Delegation).

“Resolution 39 of the Politburo and Decree 108 of the Government on streamlining the payroll have not changed in quality, but mainly in quantity. Reducing the number of people at the top will only cause the number of people at the bottom to swell. Reducing the number of people in the apparatus, mainly by changing sectors, will only cause them to work elsewhere. This is not a true streamlining. There is no need to evaluate the quality of cadres to remove those who do not meet the standards from the apparatus. Streamlining by 10% is to distill the quality of the apparatus, not simply to filter and reduce the quantity.”

"In the Prime Minister's recent meeting with businesses, Mr. De in Thanh Hoa said that 50% of officials and civil servants are currently just sitting around doing nothing. Before that, a leader quoted an expert's opinion, saying that 30% of people in the administrative apparatus go to work with an umbrella in the morning and come home with an umbrella in the afternoon. Personally, I think that rate is even higher. With such a team, how can we issue good policies?", Mr. Van frankly said.

According to him, because the apparatus is cumbersome, "if you squeeze the top, the bottom will swell", meaning that reducing the number of agencies above will swell the bottom, reducing the number of people in one agency will increase the number in another unit, not really streamlining.

Mr. Van said that the important thing to implement the streamlining of the payroll is to consider socialization and autonomy. Because public service units account for 3/4 of the payroll. In the future, we will implement the project to innovate the financial management method for service units combined with the project on organizational structure. "To do this, I think there needs to be a shared responsibility between the central and local levels."

If the country wants to develop, Mr. Van said, the important thing is to make use of talented people. However, there are alarming problems in personnel work. "That is the phenomenon of the whole family holding positions and appointing relatives. Recently I heard the saying "first descendants, second money, third relationships, fourth disciples", so there is no room for intelligence. First are relatives, then money, then calling to entrust and exchange, then there is no room for talented people", delegate Van emphasized and cited "recently there was even a case of a hospital director in Dong Thap appointing his epileptic son as deputy head of department".

According to him, many people are currently appointed to leadership positions, standing and speaking fluently but no one understands what they say, and when they take their minds off the paper, their intelligence cannot be demonstrated. "With such capacity, management will only lead to chaos," he said.

"I regret that this amendment to the Penal Code lacks sanctions in personnel work, from introduction, nomination, recommendation to file appraisal, and then appointment. In this important field, if any individual commits a violation, they must be punished by criminal law, so that they see the red line and are afraid to take risks," Mr. Van proposed.

According to Mr. Van, industrialization must be associated with modernization, which are the prerequisites plus high-quality human resources. Knowing how to utilize talents will lead to a breakthrough in high growth quality.

Regarding the organization of the apparatus, we are currently taking the wrong approach. The design of the apparatus must start from the functions and aspects that the apparatus affects. Currently, we have identified the functions of the ministries and branches with many overlapping areas. As for the growth forecast, not only the Ministry of Planning and Investment but also the Ministry of Finance. I appreciate that the Government is piloting the merger of these two agencies at the Department level.

Minister of Home Affairs Le Vinh Tan.

“The Ministry of Home Affairs has the idea of ​​building a job position project, but it does not start from the apparatus, but starts from imagining how many people that job will be. That is not possible, it must follow the process from function to task, from task to job, and from job to “give birth” to labor. Through supervision, I see that many localities have built job positions but have not been approved because the Ministry of Home Affairs cannot measure them. Sitting at the central level to “position” and the lower level does not know if it is right or wrong, so it will be out of balance. The only way is to assign staffing, assign responsibility to the head, and be responsible before the law,” analyzed Deputy Van.

Difficult because subordinates push even small tasks to superiors.

Responding to the opinions and analysis of Deputy Tran Thanh Van and several other delegates, Minister of Home Affairs Le Vinh Tan said that the cumbersome and stagnant apparatus that has lasted for a long time is due to the fact that there are still too many problems in decentralization and delegation of power. For example, in the home affairs sector, to recruit a civil servant at the district level without an exam, a report must be made to the Minister of Home Affairs, while the Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee is assigned to appoint the director of the department, not through the Ministry.

“There are very small things but we make the procedures too complicated. I want to talk about decentralization in an administrative unit, one job in my opinion should not have more than 2 levels of responsibility, that is 1 level of implementation, 1 level of inspection and supervision. Regarding the issue of streamlining the payroll, every 6 months the locality synthesizes a report to the ministry, the ministry reviews, after the assessment, the Ministry of Finance will allocate funding based on that,” Minister Le Vinh Tan acknowledged.

According to the Minister, many times he told the localities that the Ministry would ask for opinions and let the localities do it right away, the Ministry would only do post-inspection, but we have too many levels of inspection and appraisal, which prolongs the time and makes the apparatus too cumbersome.

“The task of the Government and ministries is only to build institutions, develop planning strategies, and strengthen inspection and supervision. It is not appropriate for the Government to go down to the local level to see how many deputies are left. Decentralization means that whoever makes a mistake is responsible, not that when a mistake is made, this or that agency is held responsible. Along with that, the responsibility of the leader is that if you make a mistake, you must take responsibility, not blame anyone else,” the head of the Home Affairs sector stated his opinion.

Talking about streamlining the apparatus and reducing focal points, the Minister of Home Affairs said that during the working process with localities, there were many different opinions: "That is, reduce where you reduce, but don't reduce my place, arrange where you arrange, but don't arrange my place".

“From now on, I think there must be a provision on handling and sanctioning those who do not comply. Streamlining the payroll needs to be looked at comprehensively. Its origin comes from the Law on Organization of Local Government, which stipulates the number of deputy levels. The Resolution of the National Assembly classifies administrative units, which are closely related. The higher the administrative unit is classified, the more deputy levels it will have,” said Minister Le Vinh Tan.

In the Law on Local Government, why are the heads of specialized agencies all members of the committee? The responsibility of the standing committee is to both perform the tasks of a specialized agency and perform the responsibilities delegated and authorized by the committee./.

According to VOV