The door is locked and waiting to deteriorate.
The office of Hoang Son commune, Hoang Hoa district (Thanh Hoa) was built with 3 floors and a hall of more than 3,000 square meters, with a total value of up to 18 billion VND, very spacious but after the merger it was abandoned for many years. Also in Thanh Hoa, the office of Tho Thang commune People's Committee, Tho Xuan district was invested in construction in 2018, and was completed in mid-2019, just in time for the locality to receive the certificate of meeting new rural standards. Only 1 year later, in December 2019, the 2-storey office complex that had just been built with a cost of nearly 5 billion VND had to accept being abandoned to move to the new office after the merger in Xuan Lap commune. People left, the office was left overgrown with grass.... Not only the office but also many schools and medical stations are in a similar situation after the merger.
According to the report of Thanh Hoa Department of Finance, currently the whole province has 537 surplus houses and land after merging commune-level administrative units and rearranging public service units. While waiting for a specific solution, many localities have no choice but to accept spending tens of millions of dong each year to hire caretakers.
The paradox of scarcity and surplus and countless knots
While hundreds of headquarters, schools, and medical stations are abandoned, thousands of billions of dong from the invested budget are being wasted, many offices after the merger are cramped, do not meet requirements, and the budget still has to spend billions of dong to upgrade and build new ones.
Although provincial levels in localities have issued plans to rearrange and handle houses and land, district and commune levels have been slow to implement or have not worked resolutely.
Leaders of many localities said that one of the difficulties and problems they are facing is that the regulations of the Law on Management and Use of Public Assets 2017, the Land Law 2013 and many decrees and circulars related to the handling of real estate and land assets after merger are still inadequate, the regulations are unclear, or even not regulated at all.
Many problems are related to regulations on bidding and auctioning of land use rights with public assets. Meanwhile, according to the Law on Management and Use of Public Assets, public assets under the management of State agencies cannot be used for the purposes of leasing, business, joint ventures, or associations.
Efforts to untie the knot
Mr. Ha Sy Dong - Permanent Vice Chairman of Quang Tri Provincial People's Committee - said that Quang Tri Provincial People's Committee has approved 2,054 real estate facilities out of a total of 2,350 surplus real estate facilities of the province after the merger. Currently, Quang Tri Provincial People's Committee is considering and approving plans for 70 real estate facilities through auction.
Currently, Thanh Hoa province as well as many other localities have proposed that the Government soon issue a Decree amending Decree No. 167/2017/ND-CP, dated December 31, 2017 and Decree No. 67/2021/ND-CP dated July 15, 2021 of the Government for conformity. In particular, it is recommended that the Government issue specific guidance documents on the handling of surplus public assets in the form of recovery from bidding projects using land (such as cultural houses, medical stations, etc.); surplus public assets of central agencies located in the province.
Ms. Le Thi Thanh - Director of the Department of Finance of Quang Tri province - said that, based on the proposal of the locality and the Supreme People's Court, the Ministry of Finance recently decided to transfer the headquarters of the People's Court of Dong Ha city, which has been abandoned for a long time after the merger, to Quang Tri province.
In Nghe An, from 2023, the Provincial People's Committee requested to consider temporarily suspending the approval and implementation of investment projects for new construction, repair, renovation and upgrading of headquarters at administrative units expected to be merged or adjusted into other administrative units.
According to the Department of Finance of Ninh Binh province, the total number of real estate facilities managed and used by agencies, units and enterprises that are subject to rearrangement and handling in Ninh Binh province is 2,815 facilities.
