At the National Assembly Standing Committee meeting on September 4, Member of the Party Central Committee, Vice Chairman of the National Assembly Nguyen Thi Thanh proposed that the Government carefully review the regulations on abolishing procedures for inspecting fire prevention and fighting acceptance and switching to post-inspection.
This proposal is very suitable for the current requirements of administrative procedure reform.
Businesses cannot develop if they have to spend too much time and costs on overlapping administrative procedures.
The State should also not use the same control method for all projects, from a small facility to a chemical factory, from a store to a high-rise building with thousands of people living there.
Each project must be safe, but fire prevention and fighting management also needs to be suitable to reality.
The important thing is not pre-inspection or post-inspection, but how to control risks most effectively.
Moving to post-inspection, the head must be responsible for whether the project is built in accordance with the fire prevention and fighting design that has been appraised, the fire alarm, fire fighting, and escape system actually operates, and safety conditions are maintained throughout the use process.
High-rise apartments, hospitals, schools, train stations, shopping centers, production facilities with chemicals or flammable materials, places with large concentrations of people must be placed in high-risk groups.
For these projects, a strict control mechanism may still be needed in terms of design, construction, acceptance and operation.
Conversely, low-risk projects should have simplified procedures. This is the way to create a transparent business environment without loosening safety.
The next thing to do is to build a modern post-inspection system, based on data, risk classification and early warning.
There is a complete fire prevention and fighting database, projects with high risk are regularly inspected; projects with low risk are inspected according to appropriate cycles.
Resources of management agencies are therefore concentrated in the right places instead of being spread out.
A good reform is not to remove a procedure and then let businesses fend for themselves. A good reform is to remove things that the State does not necessarily have to do, but tighten responsibility for things that are absolutely not allowed to be done wrong.
Fire prevention and fighting cannot be a race between business convenience and life safety. Businesses need to remove barriers to invest faster, but in return, they must have greater responsibility to the project and people.
Removing fire prevention and fighting inspection and acceptance, switching to post-inspection is for more effective management, not for less management.
Reduce paperwork, reduce procedures, but not reduce safety.
