Heavy expenditures for State vehicles and operations of public associations may be curbed for the sake of wage reform, Le Hong Huyen, head of the Department of Social Affairs under the Central Economic Committee, said at a seminar.

After several rounds of reform, wages have yet to help improve the quality of civil servants, said Dang Nhu Loi, former vice chairman of the Committee of Social Affairs of the National Assembly (NA), at the two-day seminar in Hanoi to discuss wage reform.

“Salary and remuneration are too low for about 30% of those State employees who are working day and night dedicatedly and responsibly with great quality and efficiency, but they are too high for nearly 50% of those public servants lacking of qualifications, skills, expertise, spirits, attitudes and responsibilities as required by their positions.”

“Wage increase has been like ‘mass uprising’, for the good as well as the bad. On the same given date, the same hike is adopted across the board, generating no motivations,” said Loi at the event held by the Ministry of Home Affairs this Wednesday and Thursday.

Le Hong Huyen cited the results of a 2012 ministerial study on “Controlling the income of persons with positions and powers”, saying 79% of civil servants have other sources of income than their salaries and salary-related allowances, which remain unchecked. In other words, a certain amount of personal income tax these officials should have paid has been left out.

Huyen pointed out that two major expenditures might be cut for wage reform, namely the sums spent on State vehicles and operations of public associations.

The number of officials entitled to the use of State cars should be limited. Later, the travel expenses should be factored in their salaries, Huyen suggested.

There had been nearly 40,000 State automobiles by October 2015, not including those used by the armed forces and State-owned enterprises, says the Department of Public Asset Management under the Ministry of Finance. Each of these vehicles costs about VND320 million per year, meaning up to VND12.8 trillion is needed to operate the fleet of State cars.

“This is a huge sum, and if saved, might provide an extra source for wage reform,” he said.

In fact, those eligible to the service of State cars have been using these vehicles as their private assets. Therefore, it is necessary to further shorten the list of public officials allowed to use State automobiles, and give them more cash allowances.

In addition, budget spending for the operations of public associations is another huge sum. In 2014, the Stage budget gave more than VND14 trillion to public mass organizations from the central to grassroots levels.

With the expenses of the tasks assigned by the State and social insurance, this figure may shoot up to VND45-68 trillion, according to the “Estimate of economic costs for public mass organizations in Vietnam” done by the Vietnam Institute for Economic and Policy Research (VERP) and the University of Economics under the Hanoi-based Vietnam National University.

Thus, if public associations switched to operations in a voluntary fashion with self-governance and self-responsibility, the budget could save a great sum for wage reform.

SGT