Chairwoman of the municipal People's Council Nguyen Thi Le speaks at the meeting at District 8 ( Photo: SGGP)
The supervisory delegation of the People's Council in Ho Chi Minh City was led by Chairwoman of the municipal People's Council Nguyen Thi Le and Vice Chairman of the municipal People’s Council Nguyen Van Dung in District 8 and District 3.
Vice Chairman of the People's Committee in District 8 Nguyen Thanh Sang said that implementing the authorized content, the People's Committee of 16 wards has issued nearly 4,000 decisions to support the cost of cremation for social welfare brackets, disabled people, elderly people, poor households, near-poor families with a total amount of nearly VND7.3 billion.
In 2021, the district disbursed public investment capital achieving 97.16 percent of the year plan. In 2022, in the first seven months of the year, the district has disbursed 62.83 percent of the year plan, a high rate compared to other districts in the city.
However, when implementing urban government, localities also face problems, especially budget problems. Specifically, with the urban government model, the district is no longer a budgetary level, but becomes a budget estimation body; as a result, the People's Committees in districts and wards are difficult to be proactive in managing socio-economic development tasks, performing urgent and important tasks of national defense and security, preventing and overcoming consequences of natural disasters, epidemics and unexpected tasks during the year in the area, as well as no residual sources, other expenditures, provisions, and increase in budget revenue.
When having an urgent task but it has not been allocated an estimate, the district People's Committee must report it to the Department of Finance which will submit it to the city People's Committee and the People's Council of Ho Chi Minh City for consideration and settlement; as a result, districts must wait for approval resulting in lack of proactiveness. Since then, District 8 has proposed the city People's Committee to propose the Government report to the National Assembly to allow the district budget estimation unit in the southern metropolis to have budget reserves.
Ms. Le talks to leaders of the district ( Photo: SGGP)
In addition, District 8 also recommended adding the number of civil servants and part-time workers for densely populated wards. Currently, officials working part-time in many wards are arranged according to Decree 34/2019 of the government. However, districts bumped into a shortage of civil servants, especially during the peak period of Covid-19 epidemic prevention and control leading to overwork.
Speaking at the conclusion of the monitoring session in District 8, Ho Chi Minh City People's Council Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Le suggested the district complete a more comprehensive assessment of the implementation of Resolution 131, especially difficulties and obstacles; thereby, proposing appropriate policies.
Facing difficulties in personnel, Ms. Le asked the Department of Home Affairs to review the criteria of practical suitability in Ho Chi Minh City to have a suitable recruitment and arrangement plan. In addition, the district also needs to arrange the contingent of civil servants according to the employment position of each department. In particular, she urged leaders in districts and wards to have a meeting with city dwellers to listen to residents’ opinions.
In addition, she required the district to strengthen HCMC leaders supervision. In which, she emphasized the supervision of the implementation of the Resolution of the district Party Congress, especially the program of relocation and clearance of houses on and along the canals. According to the Chairwoman of the municipal People's Council, these are very important requirements in the context of implementing the urban government model.
After more than one year of implementation when Resolution 131, District 3 leaders announced also to encounter some difficulties. In particular, the management and administration of the budget did not promptly meet the implementation of political - economic - social tasks in the locality because districts and wards are no longer budget-level organizations under the provisions of Resolution 131 of the National Assembly and Decree 33 of the Government.
In particular, if there are unexpected expenditure tasks, the formality procedure is quite complicated. Specifically, the district must report to the Department of Finance and submit it to the People's Committee, then the People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City reports at a meeting of the city People’s Council. Therefore, districts and wards are dilatory in performing local political tasks and important tasks of social security.
District 3 also proposed that Ho Chi Minh City continue to authorize a number of contents in the management and administration of the budget in order to promptly meet the implementation of political, economic and social tasks in the locality.
At the same time, the district suggested the consideration of having a mechanism to authorize or assign tasks to, districts in the work related to the formulation, appraisal, and approval of investment policies and investment decisions in order to speed up the disbursement progress of the public investment plan.
Vice Chairman of the People's Council of Ho Chi Minh City Nguyen Van Dung asked District 3 to hold more meetings to understand and listen to residents and civil servants. He also noted that District 3 continues to comprehensively evaluate the implementation of Resolution 131 to make practical recommendations.
Along with that, Mr. Dung said that district 3 should coordinate with departments in implementing urban government and decentralizing authorization for its wards to carry out their tasks.
