From July 1, 2025, the commune-level government will directly receive and handle 14 important administrative procedures related to land, including procedures for registration and issuance of first-time land use right certificates, also known as red books. This is considered an important step forward to shorten time and costs for people, while making it transparent and improving the efficiency of land management at the grassroots level.
Registering for the first issuance of red books at the ward, Mr. Bang Truc Lam (Hong Ha ward, Hanoi) said that although he still had difficulty in opening documents online on the National Public Service Portal, he was still satisfied with the enthusiastic guidance of the staff at the Public Administration Service Point.
Mr. Bang Truc Lam shared: "The application must be registered online, but I only prepare paper documents. The staff advised and supported me to fully improve. Although things have not really gone smoothly, the enthusiasm and willingness to help of the ward staff are very worthy of recognition".
To support citizens, since July 1, lawyers and personnel of the Hanoi Bar Association have worked directly at the ward, providing free legal advice on land, contributing to shortening the time to handle procedures.
Mr. Le Hong Thang - Chairman of Hong Ha Ward People's Committee said: "The land records have many types of complicated documents, requiring detailed instructions for people to complete. Therefore, the ward has thoroughly informed cadres and civil servants to always accompany and guide carefully, avoiding interruptions in people's work".
When the two-level government system was put into operation, the number of people coming to do land procedures in Hong Ha ward increased significantly. With a complete application, the online procedure only takes about 15 - 20 minutes. However, in cases where they are not yet proficient in technology, ward officials must provide more support to shorten the time, avoiding the situation where people have to travel many times and are overloaded at the one-stop department.
At the recent Government - People Dialogue Conference, focusing on urban issues, land and red book issuance organized by the People's Committee of Vinh Hung Ward, Mr. Le Dinh Diem (Group 3, Vinh Hung Ward) reflected that currently, in the ward, there are nearly 170 households that have not been granted red books for more than 20 years since Vinh Thanh Cooperative allocated land in 2001.
Mr. Ngo Manh Cuong - Vice Chairman of Vinh Hung Ward People's Committee replied: The root is in the cooperative's violations, from allocating wrong boundaries, wrong planning, not fulfilling financial obligations, to allocating land to the wrong subjects. These problems have been mentioned in Report No. 41 of the People's Committee of Hai Ba Trung District (old) since the beginning of 2024, but so far there has been no final solution.
This is not an isolated case. At the conference, many people continued to point out the situation of land intertwined between the old management history and the new urbanization rate: agricultural land transferred with handwritten documents, pond - garden land with unclear boundaries, 5% of land has been built but not legalized, many lands are abandoned and do not have a plan for use.
The ward government said that the book issuance process has been streamlined, people can submit directly at the One-Stop Department. For cases of violations, administrative handling will be carried out before legalizing them, creating conditions for granting the book. This approach shows the effort to "implement in parallel" - both solving past backlogs and finding legal directions suitable to reality.
However, each set of land records is not only an individual administrative procedure, but also a test of institutional capacity, the ability to coordinate inter-sectoral and the updatedity of the law when handling long-term legal heritages.
