Minister of Home Affairs Lê Vĩnh Tân.

In a press briefing on the ministry’s missions in the new year, Tân said that the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA) would work with other ministries to thoroughly assess the performance and efficiency of the current Government structure and to propose a restructuring plan for a leaner administrative system for the next term of 2021-2026.

The restructuring mission came from a direct order from the Government, the minister added, to specifically scrutinise the performance of a number of particular ministries that somehow overlapped with each other in their fields.

“For example, transport and construction sectors, finance and planning and investment, or work regarding ethnicity and religions,” Tân said.

“The Government has asked (us) to look into the theoretical and reality-based foundations on some ministries which oversee a wide range of sectors, especially those with similar and overlapping functions and missions in order to work out an appropriate solution to cut down the number of offices in the upcoming term.”

The minister also said that another plan to pilot merging offices in localities was put into motion.

According to a report updated on January 6, 2020 by MoHA, a total of 15 centrally-controlled cities and provinces have registered pilot mergers to the ministry.

Each municipality proposed to integrate different offices which were deemed to step on each other’s feet in terms of functions and responsibilities in their own locality.

Quảng Ninh and Yên Bái, for example, asked to merge their departments of home affairs with the provincial Party Committee’s organisation boards.

Đắk Nông, meanwhile, wants to have its Department of Transport and Department of Construction combined.

The number of pilot proposals sent to MoHA, however, was far from sufficient, even though the ministry had issued a second call to the localities on December 31 to submit their plans.

Tân said that more notices will be sent out until at least 20 per cent of provincial-level administrative offices are registered in the pilot plan.

“The general idea here is we have to be extra cautious and careful when doing this (the mergers). We will only try out the pilot plan if there’s 80 per cent chance of success,” he said.

“It’s definitely unwanted if the pilot is rolled out and then gets scrapped to return to the old way.” —VNS