VietNamNet Bridge – Corruption related to recruitment of public servants still occurs because of inadequacies in the competitive exams. In the government apparatus, up to 30% of civil servants are good for nothing, said Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.

“VND100mil bribe for becoming a Hanoi’s public servant just rumors”

Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.

Speaking at the first meeting of the Steering Committee of the project to promote reform of the civil servant mechanism last week, Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said that the current civil servant mechanism is still heavily subsidized, which does not help bring into play the intelligence of staff. He questioned whether the existing 2.8 million civil servants have wholly devoted themselves to their jobs?

According to Phuc, the total number of civil servants is high but up to 30% of them are good for nothing. They only go to the office in the morning and return home in the afternoon. Nothing will happen if they do not go to work.

He also said that corruption related to recruitment of public servants still occurs because of the problems of the competitive exams. He asked the Steering Committee to figure out ways to find good staff to appoint to public servants positions.

Speaking at the conference, the representatives of some ministries said that the current civil servant regime is unreasonable. Many newly recruited public servants work very effective, much more than the major specialist, but their wage and welfares are very low. Meanwhile the specialist work inefficient but still enjoy high benefits and keep high positions. The treatment regime for public servants is too low, which does not encourage them to work.

Justice Deputy Minister Le Hong Son said that Vietnam should give up the payroll mechanism to replace with a flat rate mechanism. However, representatives of the Ministries of Finance, Science, Technology, Information and Communications said the flat rate mechanism is not suitable because it will create the inconsistent state in employee salaries. Therefore, no country in the world applies this mechanism. Performing administrative reform, reducing public servants is the only way to raise salary for public servants.

Deputy Prime Minister--Nguyen Xuan Phuc said, if Vietnam does not innovate the civil servant mechanism, it will fail in the market economy. However, this is a complex task.

He asked the ministries, sectors and localities to immediately apply online recruitment exams of civil servants and have job description for each position of civil servant.

The project to promote reform of the civil servant mechanism was approved by the Prime Minister at the end of 2012 to build "professional, responsible, dynamic, transparent and effective" public services.

Lao Dong