Cannot "blame the legal system" to shirk responsibility

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh speaks at the group discussion session.

"Diagnosing the right disease" of socio-economics

Discussing in groups, National Assembly deputies said that in the context of the world economy facing many difficulties and challenges, with efforts in direction, management and implementation, our country's socio-economic situation in 2023 will still basically achieve encouraging results.

However, for the 8 difficulties and problems mentioned in the Government's report, it is necessary to clearly identify the causes and "correctly diagnose" the socio-economic disease in order to have the most effective "prescription". In particular, the responsibilities of each ministry and sector need to be clarified.

According to the Government's report, public investment disbursement has improved significantly. The estimated disbursement by the end of September 2023 reached 51.38% of the plan. However, delegate Duong Khac Mai (Dak Nong delegation) said that the disbursement rate is still low. Some ministries and localities have good disbursement rates, but central and local agencies have disbursement rates below the national average.

Scene of the group discussion session at the Ho Chi Minh City National Assembly Delegation.

Regarding state budget expenditure, delegate Nguyen Thanh Trung (Yen Bai delegation) said that there is still a slow allocation of capital (both development investment and regular expenditure). Although the Government has focused on directing and urging the disbursement progress, it still does not meet the requirements, especially the capital for the National Target Program and projects using ODA loans and preferential loans from foreign donors is low.

“Investment project preparation is still a weak link, leading to capital waiting for projects to complete investment procedures, prolonging capital delivery time, affecting disbursement progress and efficiency of investment capital,” said the delegate.

Discussing in groups, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh (National Assembly Delegation of Can Tho City) spent a lot of time discussing with delegates about investment, development, and climate change response in the Mekong Delta region. The Mekong Delta is extremely important to the agricultural sector and to the country's development. "The Government is directing the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to develop a process to grow 1 million hectares of clean rice, develop green agriculture, and develop sustainably to serve food security and sustainable exports," said the Prime Minister.

The issue of landslides in the Mekong Delta is a big one, and we need to address immediate needs while also building large, long-term projects to prevent negative impacts. The Prime Minister emphasized that this is one of the important tasks identified by the Government. Among the projects that need to be implemented are those to combat landslides, subsidence, salinity, and climate change.

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh also noted other major issues such as prioritizing human resource training and transport infrastructure. Emphasizing the advantage of the Mekong Delta region being rivers and water, and being connected to rivers, there must be bridges and ports. The Prime Minister noted that in developing transport infrastructure, the Mekong Delta can take advantage of and exploit rivers but must do so in a sustainable manner.

The basic legal system is suitable.

Discussing in groups, National Assembly Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue (National Assembly Delegation of Hai Phong City) emphasized that we have identified a group of cadres and civil servants who shirk responsibility, avoid responsibility, are afraid of making mistakes, do not dare to do, and do not fully perform their assigned functions and tasks. National Assembly delegates raised the reason why this situation exists? Is it due to legal problems or organizational implementation or both? To what extent?

National Assembly Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue speaks at the discussion.

To solve that problem, at the fifth session, the National Assembly issued Resolution 101/2023/QH15 assigning the Government to conduct a comprehensive review of the legal system, focusing on 22 key areas. To ensure independence and support for the Government's working group, the National Assembly Standing Committee also established a working group. The results of the review, although independent, were unanimous, reaching a common conclusion that the legal system is basically consistent with the Party's guidelines, policies, and guidelines, compatible with international treaties to which Vietnam is a member, basically meeting the requirements, being synchronous, unified, feasible, and creating stable national development.

“The review results also show that the legal system is increasingly being improved and completed. Through the review report, the opinion that blaming the legal system for fear of making mistakes and not being able to do things or having problems is incorrect,” the National Assembly Chairman affirmed.

The review results also showed that there are problems, overlaps, and inconsistencies in the legal system, but the number of documents is not large.

Speaking at the discussion in the group, delegate Nguyen Minh Duc (Ho Chi Minh City Delegation) said that in reality, after compiling the new curriculum textbooks, there were inconsistencies and many errors, so he suggested that the Education sector immediately summarize them to consider supplementing and editing them soon.

Talking about the "incurable disease" of extra teaching and learning, delegates said that the salary system for teachers has not yet met practical requirements.

“I earnestly request the Government to have a strong directive of “command” nature, how to improve the lives of teachers to ensure human resources, at the same time minimize extra teaching and learning”, the delegate emphasized and said that the current young generation with a dense curriculum has spent too much time studying, so they are weak in life skills, along with the influence of social networks, there have been consequences of bad behavior, school violence...

Regarding the construction of the National Target Program on revitalizing and developing Vietnamese culture and people, delegate Nguyen Minh Duc raised the issue of why we need to revive culture when our country has a long-standing cultural tradition. "Cultural revival is nothing more than training from the young generation, in which family, school, and society must be exemplary environments to foster culture for the young generation."

Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Nguyen Van Hung speaks.

Regarding this issue, Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Nguyen Van Hung (Kon Tum Delegation) said that the National Target Program on cultural revival and development, Vietnamese people in terms of culture mainly focuses on building a cultural environment, embellishing, preserving, and promoting heritages, thereby promoting culture... Through the synthesis from localities, we have the figure of 350 trillion VND, this is a general figure, still needing to be specifically quantified in the budget for each stage.

Discussing in the group, Minister of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs Dao Ngoc Dung (National Assembly delegate of Thanh Hoa Delegation) also expressed his opinion: Along with reforming public sector salaries, it is necessary to reform state enterprise salaries, as well as adjust salaries appropriately for retirees and other groups.

For the public sector, Mr. Dao Ngoc Dung said that the most important thing is to eliminate the basic salary and pay according to job position. In the state-owned enterprise sector, it is proposed to reform salaries in this sector with the content that managers receive the same salary as workers, when profits are high, both receive high benefits. At the same time, the State does not intervene in the salary scale, enterprises have full authority to issue, the State only regulates the minimum wage applicable to workers.

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