Prime Minister: Ready to operate new apparatus after restructuring and merger on July 1

According to the Government Electronic Information Portal, on the afternoon of April 14, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, Head of the Government Steering Committee, summarized the implementation of Resolution No. 18 "Some issues on continuing to innovate and reorganize the apparatus of the political system to be streamlined and operate effectively and efficiently" (Steering Committee) and chaired the Steering Committee meeting.

The meeting aimed to immediately implement the Resolution of the 11th Central Conference, the Plan of the Central Steering Committee to summarize the implementation of Resolution No. 18, and the direction of General Secretary To Lam on the implementation of the arrangement and merger of provincial and communal administrative units and the construction of a two-level political system at the local level.

After listening to reports, opinions and conclusions of the meeting, the Prime Minister requested the Ministry of Home Affairs and relevant agencies to continue reviewing and supplementing the tasks that need to be performed to arrange and merge provincial and communal administrative units and build a two-level local government organization model; ensuring that no tasks are missed or overlapped.

The Ministry of Home Affairs is also responsible for guiding the implementation of the Public Administration Service Center at the provincial and communal levels. The Ministry of Science and Technology guides and unifies the software for processing nationwide and performing administrative procedures regardless of geographical boundaries; provinces and cities establish investment promotion and calling centers.

The Ministry of Finance provides guidance on facilities and headquarters of agencies after arrangement, ensuring suitability, efficiency, avoiding waste, and prioritizing use for healthcare, education and public purposes.

The Prime Minister assigned the Ministry of Science and Technology to provide further guidance on the implementation of Resolution 57 of the Politburo on breakthroughs in science and technology development, innovation, and digital transformation; the Ministry of Public Security and other agencies to review relevant regulations to continue to smoothly implement Project 06.

The head of the Government directs ministries and branches to guide localities on the organization and internal apparatus of departments, branches, and specialized agencies of local governments. Regarding administrative procedures under the authority of the district level, the Government Office synthesizes and proposes implementation to the provincial and communal levels.

"The arrangement of boundaries and merger of communes should create the most convenience for people, such as for students going to school.", the Prime Minister emphasized.

The Prime Minister urged ministers and heads of sectors to closely follow progress to direct work and assign tasks with a spirit of high determination, great effort, drastic action, completing each task, assigning "clear people, clear work, clear progress, clear products, clear responsibilities, clear authority".

The work must be carried out synchronously among ministries, branches and agencies; the implementation process must be inspected, urged and reported according to the regulations of the Central Steering Committee. Deputy Prime Ministers, as assigned, inspect localities monthly, working groups of Government members urge, the Government Office and ministries have departments to monitor localities in performing assigned tasks.

Regarding the legal basis, the Prime Minister stated that he proposed that the National Assembly use one law to amend many related laws, including those on local government organization and commune-level authority, in the direction of promoting decentralization and delegation of power to localities.

The Prime Minister noted that the arrangement process must ensure progress and quality, comply with regulations, and assign Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Hoa Binh to directly direct the handling of any content lacking regulations or having regulations but being exceeded in practice. If it exceeds authority, it must be reported to competent authorities; agencies must closely monitor the situation, promptly handle emerging issues, and ensure smooth regular work.

The Prime Minister also assigned the Permanent Deputy Prime Minister to direct the Ministry of Home Affairs to proactively guide ministries, branches, agencies and localities to prepare for the operation of the new apparatus on July 1 after the arrangement and merger.

The 11th Central Conference agreed on the policy of organizing local government at two levels: provincial level (provinces, centrally-run cities), communal level (communes, wards, special zones under provinces and cities); ending the operation of district-level administrative units; agreeing on the number of provincial-level administrative units after the merger to be 34 provinces and cities; agreeing on the merger of communal-level administrative units to ensure that the whole country reduces the number of communal-level administrative units by about 60-70% compared to the present.

On the morning of April 14, General Secretary To Lam, Head of the Central Steering Committee on summarizing the implementation of Resolution No. 18, chaired a meeting to discuss and approve the Steering Committee's Plan on the implementation of the arrangement and merger of provincial and communal administrative units and the construction of a two-level political system at the local level.

Immediately afterwards, the Government Steering Committee issued a Plan to implement the arrangement of administrative units and build a two-level local government organization model.