The proposal was made by the parliament’s committee for legal affairs on October 30, as the law-making body met to discuss the implementation of administrative reform in the past five years.
In its report, the committee for legal affairs suggested that the government considers unifying a number of ministries, which have similar scopes of management, to address the overlap or lack of state management.
The committee also called for the re-organisation of the internal structures of ministries and ministry-level bodies by reducing the number of intermediate-level agencies, staff and deputy roles.
Similar downsizing efforts are also expected to be carried out at the local government level and localities can have different government structures depending on their specific conditions.
Meanwhile, a model in which a Party secretary is also a chairman of the People’s Committee will be piloted at district and commune levels where appropriate, said Nguyen Khac Dinh, head of the committee for legal affairs.
According to the committee, the government has made significant efforts to reform the administrative machinery but the apparatus remains cumbersome, while the number of staff has increased.
Last week, General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong signed a resolution aiming to reduce the number of staff in public institutions by at least 10% by 2021 and by another 10% in the next four years.
One of the key measures to realise the goal is the re-organisation and merging of public institutions into multi-functional bodies.
