According to document No. 569-CV/TU dated June 22, 2026 of Thanh Hoa Provincial Party Committee on temporarily suspending the recruitment of civil servants and public employees at the commune level, the Standing Committee of the Provincial Party Committee requests the Standing Committee of the Provincial People's Committee Party Committee to lead and direct the temporary suspension of the recruitment of civil servants and public employees at the commune level until new instructions are issued.
The document clearly states that the temporary suspension of recruitment is implemented in the context that the Central Government is directing the preliminary review of 1 year of operating the apparatus of the political system and local government at 2 levels.
Currently, the Standing Committee of Thanh Hoa Provincial Party Committee is directing functional agencies to develop plans to assign staff to agencies and localities according to the workload, assigned tasks and according to the classification of administrative units. The criteria considered include area, population, infrastructure, economic scale...
This move takes place in the context that Thanh Hoa, after 1 year of operating the 2-level local government model, is continuing to review and re-evaluate the organizational structure, staff and workload at the commune level.
Previously, Thanh Hoa had implemented the arrangement of 547 communes, wards, and towns into 166 commune-level administrative units. After removing the district level, the commune-level government was decentralized, authorized and received many new tasks, including many specialized fields, requiring a team of cadres and civil servants with appropriate professional capacity.
According to the preliminary report on 1 year of operating the 2-level local government model, the commune level in Thanh Hoa currently undertakes more than 1,060 tasks. In which, many tasks previously under the district level have been transferred to the grassroots level.
This reality creates great pressure on the organizational structure, personnel and expertise at the commune level. In many localities, civil servants have to concurrently work in many fields, while some fields such as planning, construction investment, information technology, education, and health care still lack specialized personnel.
The temporary suspension of the recruitment of commune-level civil servants and public employees is therefore considered a necessary review step before Thanh Hoa completes the new staffing plan, ensuring personnel arrangement close to the workload, population size, natural area and specific characteristics of each locality.
Thanh Hoa has also proposed to the Central Government to consider allowing the province to continue to study arranging commune-level administrative units, in order to create more development space, streamline the apparatus, save budget and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the grassroots government.
