When someone has to leave the public sector, or their familiar environment, they will find it challenging, except the ones who have side jobs.

Minister of Home Affairs Pham Thi Thanh Tra has mentioned an ‘outstanding policy’ when streamlining apparatus, and I hope we will have reasonable policies.

I think that the officers who are not bad enough to be laid off, but have normal capability and plan to retire in some years, will accept to retire earlier than planned if we have suitable policies to encourage them to retire now.

As for those who are not competent enough and must be excluded from personnel, we could consider some solutions applied in China, when downsizing their personnel by 50 percent.

If there are other positions and jobs at their current agencies which set lower requirements and they can be satisfied by the workers, they should be placed in new positions. The workers can also be sent to organizations and agencies if they still can accomplish their work.

Another solution is sending workers to refresh training courses, so they can adapt to other new jobs in the future. While they attend training courses, they should be allowed to enjoy full salaries.

In other words, the state would give them 2-year salaries, so they can find other jobs themselves. Excluding redundant officers from the apparatus is the last resort.

What should agencies and organizations pay attention to, besides the qualifications of workers, when streamlining the apparatus?

The primary concern is the stabilization of the apparatus after restructuring.

Guidelines specify that the total staff size of newly formed bodies resulting from mergers should not exceed the combined pre-merger totals. Redundant officers should step by step be rearranged within five years.

However, five years is not a short period.

What we hope in the new apparatus, according to Party Chief To Lam, will be better than the old one. However, if we rearrange the apparatus, the new apparatus in the newly-formed agencies will still comprise nearly all officers of old agencies, for at least five years.

If the organizational restructuring is executed well but there is no adjustment in personnel, the operations will undoubtedly fail to meet their objectives.

I believe that within two to three years, staffing should be nearly okay, while five years is too long. If the new organizations are restructured, and they still operate the old way and consist of the same workers, the operation efficiency won’t change.

In a previous conversation with VietNamNet over ten years ago, you mentioned age restrictions in the public sector, saying that regulations were not really flexible and could create favorable conditions to better operation. Have the problems been solved yet?

I still cannot see any change in the policies. The old regulations on age restrictions and criteria for public servants still exist. The policies are still not good enough for workers in the private sector to find public sector work rewarding and worthwhile.

For example, the civil service exam is almost closed to outsiders due to its criteria. How can we attract talents with such barriers?

Public non-business units also try to attract talents by offering labor contracts, but this method is not sustainable.

In 2017, the Government issued a decree on policies to attract talents and prepare personnel from outstanding graduates and young scientists, with many incentives for these workers.

However, I think there’s confusion between academic excellence—reflected in degrees—and competency in civil service. This approach is a blunder. They may excel academically, but may not be excellent at work immediately. 

But the people with excellent academic achievements really have good criteria which allow them to become good public servants after a short time. And they must be different from the officers with average learning records. Do you think so?

But when they are still not good enough, they should not be offered such big preferences. The preferences are unfair to other public servants.

I know some public servants who studied continuously to obtain bachelor's, master's degrees and then doctorate and they were recruited without any exams. The pay for them is equal to the salary paid to a civil servant with 20-year service length.

Ngan Anh