HCMC: Proposal to remove difficulties in canteens, kitchens, and parking lots for schools

On the afternoon of July 31, the Culture and Social Affairs Committee of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Council sent a document to the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee requesting consideration and resolution of difficulties and problems in the operation of canteens, kitchens, and parking lots of schools in the city.

Accordingly, the Ho Chi Minh City Inspectorate has just concluded that a number of schools in District 8, Binh Tan, and Tan Phu have not properly implemented the provisions of Decree No. 151/2017/ND-CP (dated December 26, 2017) of the Government detailing a number of articles of the Law on Management and Use of Public Assets.

Specifically, schools do not have a project to use public assets for leasing and association approved by the Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee, so they must temporarily close their canteens, kitchens, and parking lots.

Head of the Department of Culture and Society Cao Thanh Binh commented that organizing services such as canteens, parking lots, and kitchens is an urgent need for students to ensure food hygiene and safety and ensure security and order at the school gate area. However, up to now, many schools have not been able to maintain canteens, parking lots, and kitchens, causing difficulties for schools and students.

From that reality, the Department of Culture and Society recommends that there should be a solution for schools in approving projects to use public assets to ensure that educational activities in schools take place stably and smoothly.

At the same time, approving the project to use public assets helps avoid wasting public assets in public schools, helping schools have more revenue to invest in educational reform as well as welfare for staff and increase taxes for the state budget.

According to the document sent to the People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City, the Culture - Social Committee of the People's Council of Ho Chi Minh City proposed that the People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City study and give instructions to the Department of Finance and related departments, branches and agencies to find solutions and advise on measures to remove difficulties and obstacles of the education and training sector in formulating a project to use public assets for leasing and linking to maintain the operation of parking lots, canteens, kitchens and some other auxiliary activities in school units, serving the essential needs of students and teachers.

In addition, in order to promptly maintain the stability of current educational activities, it is recommended that the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee have specific solutions for public service units in the education and training sector (including preschools, primary schools, secondary schools, high schools and other public educational institutions) to ensure legality in parking, canteens, kitchens, swimming pools, gymnasiums, sports fields, and classrooms to serve the learning and training needs of teachers and students during and after school hours from the 2024-2025 school year. This is to avoid wasting existing facilities, while also having funds for regular maintenance and repair of school facilities.

Students of Vo Truong Toan Secondary School participate in a boarding meal served by the school kitchen.

In addition, the Committee for Culture and Society recommends that the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee have specific solutions to remove difficulties surrounding Official Dispatch No. 9757/BTC-QLCS (dated September 26, 2022) of the Ministry of Finance on guidelines for the use of public assets for leasing, joint ventures and associations at public service units.

In particular, the instructions clearly state: "In case a unit uses premises as a canteen or parking lot to serve the unit's operations, it is not a case of using public assets for business purposes, leasing, joint ventures, and associations as prescribed in Articles 56, 57, and 58 of the Law on Management and Use of Public Assets and does not have to prepare a project."

However, in reality, most educational institutions are not capable of organizing and managing the operation of canteens and parking lots, so they have to lease premises to competent units to organize and implement. Thus, a leasing plan must be established according to regulations.

Along with that, according to the provisions of Clause 3, Article 57 of the Law on Management and Use of Public Assets and Clauses 3 and 4, Article 46 of Decree No. 151/2017/ND-CP, public service units must determine the rental price in accordance with the actual rental price on the market and conduct an auction for the lease of assets (the rental price is adjusted to increase according to market fluctuations and must not be lower than the winning auction price).

Therefore, based on the above regulations, the rental price will have a high value, greatly affecting the payment level of students participating in these types of services.

Currently, some units are in the process of completing legal documents on real estate or units are still having problems with real estate documents (currently there is no certificate of land use rights and assets attached to land), so they do not meet the requirements for documents according to the project's regulations.

Along with that, there are currently no regulations on the area standards of public works as a basis for determining assets assigned, invested in construction, and purchased to perform State-assigned tasks but not yet fully utilized according to Clause 1, Article 57 of the Law on Management and Use of Public Assets.

Organizing annual auctions for canteens, kitchens, and parking lots in schools faces many difficulties in terms of documents, procedures, and time; winning enterprises do not dare to invest much in one year because they may not win the auction the following year and are not guaranteed to comply with current legal regulations.

Faced with a series of difficulties and problems, the Culture and Society Committee (HCMC People's Council) proposed that the HCMC People's Committee find solutions for schools.

ATTENTION

Source: https://www.sggp.org.vn/tphcm-de-xuat-thao-go-kho-khan-ve-can-tin-bep-an-bai-giu-xe-cho-cac-truong-hoc-post751988.html