Proposal to pilot 'full package empowerment' at district level

Reporting and receiving opinions from National Assembly deputies on the National Target Program in the field of labor, war invalids and social affairs, Minister Dao Ngoc Dung said: The Government has proposed to the National Assembly about 7 specific policy mechanisms. In the immediate future, in the Resolution on supervision, the National Assembly should allow a pilot program to fully delegate power to the district level.

Minister of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs Dao Ngoc Dung highly appreciated the monitoring results of the Monitoring Team, which objectively and comprehensively assessed the implementation process of the 3 National Target Programs (NTPs). During the monitoring process, there were fundamental changes in the awareness and actions of all levels and sectors.

Regarding the National Target Program on Sustainable Poverty Reduction, Minister Dao Ngoc Dung said that, unlike the previous term, this term requires more work and more difficulty because it not only reduces income poverty but also requires multidimensional poverty reduction, at a higher level and more comprehensively.

Recently, besides the determination, the implementation of the Program has encountered many difficulties and challenges, in which objective causes from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, natural disasters, floods, storms, and landslides have greatly affected the implementation of the Program.

However, with great efforts of the entire political system, especially localities, the rise of poor and near-poor households has achieved remarkable results.

Minister Dao Ngoc Dung also analyzed the difficulties in implementing the National Target Program on Sustainable Poverty Reduction in particular and the three national target programs in general.

Regarding the National Target Program on Sustainable Poverty Reduction, the Minister affirmed that no one is born and grows up wanting to be poor and no one does not want to escape poverty.

Nowadays, there is no longer a policy of giving away money but has completely shifted to conditional support. Recently, hundreds of poor households have voluntarily written applications to escape poverty and proactively transferred their support benefits to others and wished to actively strive to escape poverty, this is something that should be commended.

For poor households that are unable to work and cannot escape poverty, the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs is coordinating with the Ministry of Finance to advise the Government on criteria so that these people can have a life better than or no worse than that of poor households.

Regarding housing support, Minister Dao Ngoc Dung said that, in the spirit of Decision 90 and Resolution 24 of the National Assembly, we strive to eliminate about 100,000 dilapidated apartments of poor households in 74 poor districts during this term.

Third issue, the Minister said that the implementation of the New Rural Development Program and Sustainable Poverty Reduction is progressing relatively well. However, the Socio-Economic Development Program for Ethnic Minorities in Mountainous Areas is even more difficult, but all three programs are having to issue too many documents, even though they do not want to, they still have to issue them because of the implementation of legal regulations.

Furthermore, the decentralization and delegation of authority are not clear, leading to the situation where the lower level waits for the higher level, the higher level tells the lower level to do it but the lower level is afraid. In addition, the allocation of small and fragmented projects is too much; along with that, the capital allocation is slow and dribbled....

Minister Dao Ngoc Dung said that the Government has proposed to the National Assembly about 7 specific policy mechanisms. In the immediate future, in the Resolution on supervision, the National Assembly should allow a pilot program to fully empower the district level to proactively decide on adjusting the capital structure from programs and between programs; in which each province selects one or two districts to pilot implementation.