Ministry of Interior talks about withdrawing proposal to increase teachers' salaries

At the regular press conference this afternoon, Mr. Nguyen Tien Thanh, Chief of Office of the Ministry of Home Affairs, answered a number of issues of public concern, including the proposal not to regulate teachers' salaries in the draft law on Amendments and Supplements to a number of articles of the Law on Education.

Mr. Thanh said that the conclusion of the 8th conference of the 9th Central Executive Committee on salary reform, social insurance and preferential allowances for meritorious people, for cadres and civil servants in all sectors, a common salary table is applied as a basis for granting or supporting funds from the state budget, for paying and enjoying social insurance, paying health insurance, and paying salary for days off.

Actual salary paid depends on the revenue and performance of each public service unit. The Education and Health sectors are subject to appropriate preferential allowances.

Based on the above regulations, the Government issued Decree 204/2004/ND-CP on salary regime for cadres, civil servants, public employees and armed forces; issued a number of documents on allowance regime for teachers.

Up to now, teachers are classified according to their professional titles as prescribed in Table 3 (professional and technical salary table for cadres and civil servants in state-owned enterprises) issued with Decree 204, and are entitled to salary allowances for civil servants in the same working area and are entitled to preferential allowances according to their profession with the highest level of up to 70% and seniority allowances. This is the State's preferential treatment for teachers.

In addition, the 5th conference of the 11th Central Executive Committee on "Some issues on wages, social insurance, preferential allowances for meritorious people and reform orientations until 2020" clearly stated the application of a common salary table, implementation of industry-specific policies through allowances; research to expand the gap between salary levels accordingly. At the same time, review and clearly identify the characteristics, on that basis build and perfect the allowance and subsidy regimes to ensure fairness and reasonableness, especially allowance regimes by profession (seniority, incentives, responsibility by profession, public service).

The Ministry of Home Affairs believes that in recent times, many ministries and sectors, when drafting specialized laws, have included regulations on wages (including allowances), which disrupt the original design of the wage regime in the political system, causing inconsistencies between sectors and professions.

Currently, the Central Steering Committee on research on reforming wage policies, social insurance and incentives for meritorious people, headed by Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue, is developing a project to reform wage policies for cadres, civil servants, public employees, armed forces and workers in enterprises, reporting to the Government Party Committee to submit to the 7th Central Conference of the 12th term.

Therefore, the Ministry of Home Affairs proposes not to regulate teachers' salaries in the draft revised Law on Education in order to research, develop and promulgate in sync with the salary regime for cadres, civil servants, public employees and armed forces in the political system, ensuring general correlation, consistent with the state budget capacity.