Good advice is hard to come by and common tropes regurgitated as advice can often be little help, so one advisory department in the capital is firmly eschewing the credo ‘double the trouble’.

The Hanoi Department of Home Affairs.

The Hanoi Department of Home Affairs acts as an advisor for the municipal people’s committee about personnel and working staff. 

It should be a model department, but in fact has twice the number of deputy directors it should, employing eight instead of four, leaving life in the department twice as nice, at least for those picking up the same pay-check for half the work.

Speaking about the issue, chief of the department’s secretariat Nguyen Thi Lieu said that the department used to have four deputy directors, and the number increased before the city’s Party Congress in November 2015.

Before the congress, two people were too old to be reelected, so they were given jobs as deputy directors of the department, with two others acting as heads of the emulation and reward division and the religion division, titles equal to deputy director, said Lieu.

In September 2015, Ministry of Home Affairs inspectors performed a spot check on personnel management in different administrative organisations of the Hanoi People’s Committee. 

The ministry did not announce the violators in detail, but confirmed that some organisations in the capital city had too many deputy directors.

A Government report sent to the National Assembly recently said that nine provinces and cities violated personnel management regulations. 

For example, the Thai Nguyen Department of Agriculture and Rural Development had 23 too many leaders. 

VNS