On October 3, the Standing Committee of the Hanoi Party Committee, People's Council, and People's Committee held an online meeting for the third quarter of 2025 with leaders of 126 communes and wards to remove obstacles in the operation of the 2-level local government model.
At the conference, Director of the Hanoi Department of Construction Nguyen Phi Thuong reported on difficulties in decentralization of management, maintenance, repair, and maintenance, transport infrastructure, technical infrastructure, and public service groups such as trees, lighting, drainage, parks, transportation, etc.
To implement the 2-level local government model, the Hanoi People's Committee agreed to assign all public service management work from the district level to the Department of Construction from July 1, 2025 to December 31, 2025; at the same time, the Department of Finance was assigned to coordinate the settlement. The transfer process went smoothly, but revealed many problems.
The report emphasizes specific issues, with detailed data, mainly due to new administrative boundaries causing area fragrance and lack of synchronization in management with a series of shortcomings in the fields of drainage, public lighting, green parks, and underground works of common use.
Notably, in the drainage sector, the Department of Construction has received 26 contracts worth VND 801.885 billion, of which 8 contracts were extended after December 31, 2025, 11 contracts expired in 2025 and 7 old districts have not been re-bidding.
The major difficulty is that the bidding area is divided into new boundaries, the contract is not synchronous in price and pricing, leading to complicated supervision and acceptance. The part without a contract (expired in 2024 and the responsibility of the district) is still maintained at a minimum but lacks a legal basis for payment. Preparations for new bidding have been delayed due to lack of clear decentralization regulations.
At the conference, Director of the Department of Finance Nguyen Xuan Luu reported on the scale of investment in technical infrastructure works along the route assigned to the commune as the investor.
Of the total 26,978 projects and tasks previously arranged by the district level, there are about 14,000 projects belonging to technical infrastructure works along the route (the fields of transportation, lighting, water supply, drainage, irrigation, dykes, telecommunications, etc.), accounting for about 51.8% of the total number of projects.
These projects have been issued a resolution by the City People's Council, the City People's Committee has issued a decision to assign the Commune People's Committee as the investor when implementing the 2-level local government model.
Director of the Department of Planning and Architecture Nguyen Trong Ky Anh reported on the determination of the authority to appraise and approve planning of the People's Committee at the commune level according to newly issued laws and decrees; in which it was stated that with the new legal system, the People's Committee at the commune level has enough basis to proactively prepare, appraise and approve planning in the area.
According to Mr. Nguyen Trong Ky Anh, the People's Committee of the commune is assigned to organize the preparation and approval of a number of types of planning, including: General planning of the commune; detailed planning of urbanized residential areas, rural residential areas, commune centers; zoning planning, auctioned land; as well as social and technical infrastructure projects invested by the commune. The Infrastructure and Urban Economic Departments or the Commune Economic Departments will appraise the cost estimates and planning documents before the Commune People's Committee approves them.
"The Department of Planning and Architecture has issued many guiding documents for the commune level to implement, including the content of implementing the Capital Master Plan adjusted to 2045, with a vision to 2065. Therefore, it is recommended that communes improve personnel and internal procedures to ensure the implementation of planning tasks in accordance with the law," said Mr. Nguyen Trong Ky Anh.
