Not streamlining the payroll is a waste of taxpayers' money.

The increasingly bloated bureaucracy of officials and civil servants remains a pressing issue, because not streamlining the payroll is a waste of taxpayers' money.

According to the plan, by the end of December, ministries, branches and localities must reduce 35,500 people. However, up to now, since 2015, the whole country has only reduced 17,500 people.

In fact, the fact that a department appoints up to 44 managers like in Hai Duong, or the increasingly bloated staff and civil servants are still issues that cause public outrage. Because not streamlining the payroll is a waste of taxpayers' money.

Illustration photo.

“Too slow” - that is the phrase that the leader of the Ministry of Home Affairs reported to the Prime Minister about the streamlining of the payroll a few days ago. In fact, the story of the delay up to now is not shocking at all, because this situation has existed for decades. And perhaps, in reports on the results of streamlining the payroll, this phrase is mentioned over and over again from year to year. To the point that hearing it so much, it becomes a habit.

According to the report of the Ministry of Home Affairs, in nearly 2 years, ministries, branches and localities have only reduced 17,500 people, of which more than 15,000 people are due to retirement. Thus, the actual reduction is only more than 1,650 people. That is just a reduction for show, not a real reduction according to the Government's Resolution.

Is streamlining the payroll so difficult that the authorities are helpless or are they just doing it to cope with it? Even though the Prime Minister and the Government have repeatedly reminded us about this task.

According to administrative reform experts, streamlining the civil service is not a difficult task. It is only difficult when there are some constraints.

Fairness and objectivity will solve this situation. Because, that fairness is implemented throughout the management process of the leaders of ministries, branches and localities, then there will be no surplus of cadres and civil servants. There will be no delay, hesitation, or consideration when having to make a decision to force someone to quit their job, when they cannot meet the job requirements.

If there were fairness, there would not be a case where a department of Hai Duong province appointed officials so widely that the entire administrative apparatus only had 2 specialists. According to the analogy of Mr. Nguyen Sy Dung, former Deputy Head of the National Assembly Office, it is an inverted pyramid model. There should be only 2 leaders and 44 employees, not 44 leaders and 2 employees.

To cover up and justify this irony, the former leader of this Department said that due to the large workload, he had to make appointments. Appointments are for the staff, for the people. This for the people is ridiculous and absurd. When everyone knows, behind the widespread appointments, for whom and for what?!

Unfortunately, this arbitrariness and disregard for regulations is not an isolated incident. It is a sobering reality in our public administration.

Not only that, even though the Government requires ministries and branches to implement a streamlined mechanism in the administrative apparatus. But, in reality, somewhere there are still apparatuses being created or enlarged.

A cumbersome administrative apparatus would be a huge waste of the tax money that the people have been paying.

Back to the issue, why has the implementation of staff streamlining not yielded the desired results? There are still civil servants who go to work with an umbrella in the morning and return home with an umbrella in the evening. There are still civil servants who work for fake wages but receive real salaries. Meanwhile, the number of staff streamlining has only been implemented very slowly, without any real change.

Is it because there are not enough strong and drastic regulations for the heads of agencies, ministries, and localities to really streamline the payroll, considering this an important task?

And to solve the problem of streamlining the payroll, we must first boldly cut down on incompetent officials and civil servants, not equate or borrow the numbers of qualified officials and civil servants to report achievements.

Then there is the streamlining of policies in the recruitment of civil servants, that is the core of the problem.

If we do not streamline the payroll, we are wasting taxpayers' money.

According to VOV