Huge surplus assets
After Project No. 3652/DA-UBND of the Provincial People's Committee, Cao Bang has 230 surplus houses and lands that need to be rearranged. Of these, 170 houses and lands are retained and continued to be used; 66 surplus houses and lands... However, the handling of these 66 houses is still very slow. Nearly 4 years have passed, but the rows of houses are still left empty, deserted and degraded.
In Hanoi, according to the reporter's records, after the merger and restructuring of the apparatus, many public properties and lands of agencies and units were abandoned and seriously degraded. The headquarters of the Hanoi Statistical Office, Facility II (To Hieu, Ha Dong District, Hanoi) has been closed and unused for many years. All items are seriously degraded. Inside this facility, it is rented to a private individual as a motorbike repair shop, while on the street side, there are nearly a dozen empty kiosks, with closed doors and peeling lime walls.
This is just one of thousands of surplus houses and lands that will be handled by Hanoi. The Hanoi People's Committee has sent a report to the Hanoi People's Council to respond to voters' suggestions and feedback on this content. Accordingly, the Hanoi People's Committee said that based on the Government's regulations on the arrangement and handling of public assets, from 2018 to now, the city has had at least 5 documents directing the handling of this matter. "The city has assigned agencies and units to implement the plan to rearrange and handle state-owned houses and lands of the city to ensure savings, efficiency and avoid waste" - the report of the Hanoi People's Committee stated.
According to Minister of Home Affairs Pham Thi Thanh Tra, in the period of 2019 - 2021, when arranging administrative units at district and commune levels, the whole country had a total surplus of 864 real estate headquarters, but so far only 349 headquarters (equivalent to over 40%) have been resolved. In the period of 2023 - 2025, there will be 50 district-level units and 1,243 commune-level units carrying out this arrangement, so the amount of surplus assets and real estate is also very large.
Close coordination of localities
Speaking with Lao Dong, Mr. Ha Ngoc Tu - Director of the Department of Finance of Cao Bang province - said: "There is a plan to resolve the above headquarters. Localities are reviewing the area of the headquarters accurately and then organizing an auction or handing over to some units for use. The spirit is that by the end of 2024, the headquarters resolution will be completed."
While waiting for the legal regulations to be amended and supplemented, Director of the Department of Finance of Thanh Hoa province Nguyen Van Tu said: The Party Committee and the district-level government need to continue to direct and urge relevant units to review surplus public assets at the commune and district levels, and carefully assess the feasibility of handling each public asset according to the approved or under-approval plan.
For public assets that have fully met the conditions for implementation according to the approved plan, the focus will be on directing the development of specific plans for each asset for implementation. For public assets that have been reviewed and are facing difficulties in procedures, the district-level People's Committee must direct the removal of difficulties and report to the competent authority for implementation guidance.
Talking to Lao Dong, Delegate Tran Thi Hong Thanh - National Assembly Delegation of Ninh Binh province said that there are two major issues that need to be raised: the arrangement of redundant staff and redundant headquarters after the arrangement of administrative units. "Based on reality, socio-economic conditions as well as the characteristics of each locality, a suitable roadmap and arrangement plan should be proposed, ensuring harmony of interests, ensuring the effectiveness as well as the goals of the implementation of the arrangement of administrative units" - Delegate Tran Thi Hong Thanh said.
Emphasizing the issue of rearranging headquarters is entangled in legal regulations, the arrangement must not waste headquarters - public assets, however, the delegate also suggested that there must be a longer-term vision for this issue. That is, there must be reasonable calculations in a certain period so that the use and arrangement of headquarters is reasonable, ensuring long-term stability in the overall locality.
According to Minister Pham Thi Thanh Tra, up to this point, the Prime Minister has issued two decrees, removing the most fundamental obstacles for localities in resolving surplus assets. However, according to the female minister, the legal basis is an issue, the important thing is the localities.
The Ministry of Home Affairs has also proactively advised the Prime Minister to issue Decision No. 139/2024 to urgently implement tasks related to planning administrative units at all levels and has assigned very specific tasks to each ministry, branch, and locality. Ms. Pham Thi Thanh Tra hopes to have close coordination between localities to serve as a basic legal basis for stably implementing the completion of administrative units at all levels in the coming period.
