Great encouragement
In the draft Decree stipulating the base salary and bonus regime for cadres, civil servants, public employees, and armed forces, the Ministry of Home Affairs proposes to increase the base salary to 2.53 million VND/month, expected to be applied from July 1, 2026.
With nearly 25 years of working in the education sector, Ms. Vo Kim Du - a teacher at Tran Ngoc Que Secondary School (Can Tho City) - shared that her current actual income is more than 15 million VND per month. This amount of money is mainly enough to cover basic living expenses such as food and travel. The tuition fee for two young children alone is a fairly large expense, forcing her and her husband to share to be able to balance.
Therefore, when the information proposed to increase the base salary, not only Ms. Du but many other teachers felt excited and looked forward to the policy being applied soon. "Although prices are currently increasing, if the salary is adjusted as proposed, teachers' lives will definitely be more stable than they are now" - Ms. Du assessed.
According to the female teacher, the salary increase is not only economically significant but also has great spiritual value for the teaching staff. "This is an encouragement for teachers who have been attached to the profession for many years, and also creates more motivation for young teachers to feel secure in their work. When income is concerned, teachers will have more conditions to focus on their work, contributing to improving the quality of education," she said.
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Dinh Trong Thinh - Senior Lecturer at the Academy of Finance - analyzed that this base salary increase is of great significance in creating motivation for cadres, civil servants, and public employees. According to him, when income is improved, workers in the state sector will have more interest in working, improve productivity and long-term attachment to work. At the same time, when the salary level is sufficient to ensure life for themselves and their families, negative phenomena can also be limited. "This is one of the important meanings of salary policy reform" - Mr. Thinh said.
More time needed to complete salary reform
However, according to Assoc. Prof. Dr. Dinh Trong Thinh, salary reform in the direction of paying salaries according to job positions still needs more time to be completed. To implement this, it is necessary to build a system of criteria and specific job norms for many industries in the public sector. Meanwhile, the management and organizational mechanism is currently in the process of adjustment, so many job positions are not really stable to build detailed standards.
Therefore, according to Assoc. Prof. Dr. Dinh Trong Thinh, increasing the base salary at the present time is a solution that can be implemented immediately to improve the lives of cadres, civil servants, and public employees while waiting for comprehensive salary reform steps.
He also said that it is necessary to soon prepare resources for the salary reform process in the coming time: "There are many ways to create resources such as improving labor productivity, combating budget revenue loss, expanding revenue from e-commerce and new economic sectors.
Sharing the same view, Mr. Le Quang Trung - former Deputy Director in charge of the Department of Employment (Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, now the Ministry of Home Affairs) - said that salary reform needs to be linked to building a synchronous work efficiency assessment system.
According to Mr. Trung, the assessment needs to be based on the specific functions, tasks and job positions of each official and civil servant. When job positions are clearly identified and a set of work performance evaluation indices (KPI) is built, salary payment according to job positions and work results can be effective.
He also said that agencies and units need to continue to review and rearrange job positions to clearly identify needs and personnel structures. On that basis, it is possible to move towards direct salary payment according to job positions, thereby creating motivation to improve the work efficiency of cadres and civil servants.
In addition to improving income, salary reform also needs to aim at attracting highly qualified and technical human resources to participate in the public sector, contributing to improving the quality of the State apparatus.
