Confused communes and wards
Mr. Ho Quoc Hung - Vice Chairman of the People's Committee and Director of the Long Phu Commune Public Administration Service Center (Can Tho City) - said that as of mid-September 2025, the locality has received and processed 8 first-time paperwork applications, 15 corrections and 8 land use conversion applications. However, many documents cannot be resolved quickly due to many objective and subjective reasons.
Mr. Hung said that in many cases, buying and selling land by handwritten documents does not meet legal requirements, causing difficulties in verification. The data on the old red book, cadastral map and the current land use status are not consistent, while the land data is not yet synchronized. The Land Management Software (VBDLIS) also has many shortcomings, inaccurate information compared to reality, leading to difficulties in handling documents.
In Nhon My commune, Chairman of the People's Committee of the commune, Mr. Cao Minh Thom, said that since the implementation of the two-level government, the volume of land work has increased, especially the first-time application transferred from the branch of the Land Registration Office. The process shortens the time but requires high quality, while the Economic Department only has 7 civil servants, many of whom have to work part-time, leading to low consulting efficiency.
Mr. Thom also said that many plots of land have complicated origins, lost documents, and unsynchronized data between the commune and the branch, causing the preparation of records and verification to take a lot of time, while the time for issuing the first certificate is only 20 days. In addition, VBDLIS software has only been trained online, not applied directly on real documents, leading to initial confusion.
In Soc Trang ward, a similar situation occurred. In August, the ward resolved 2 applications and handed over certificates to the people.
Mr. Huynh Hoai Nam - Vice Chairman of the Ward People's Committee and Director of the Public Administration Service Center of Soc Trang Ward - said that determining the declared land area is difficult because it has not been measured in advance. The coordination of measurement is slow, the measurement step is prolonged, while people have to sign the boundary but are not present in the locality, causing the dossier to expire when the VBDLIS software does not temporarily stop counting the date.
Mr. Hong Minh Quyen - Deputy Director of the Lieu Tu Commune Public Administration Service Center informed - so far, only 12 dossiers for initial issuance of certificates are eligible for handling. The records are often lacking or invalid, without documents proving their origin, making it difficult to determine the time of land use. The work of surveying land plots and returning results is still slow due to work overload and high demand for surveying.
Handling overdue land records
To overcome this, the Department of Agriculture and Environment of Can Tho City has assigned 103 support staff to communes and wards. However, the city currently has only 28 branches of the Land Registration Office, many communes do not have headquarters, forcing officials to move many times, causing slow processing of documents. The Department has reported to the People's Committee of Can Tho City about the situation of overdue records, stating the causes and solutions.
According to the Department of Agriculture and Environment of Can Tho City, the main causes are frequent errors in VBDLIS software, lack of equipment at public administrative centers of communes and wards; lack of personnel at branches of the Land Registration Office; failed tax communication system and long geographical distances.
To improve, the Department of Agriculture and Environment directed the Land Registration Office to focus resources, increase working hours after work hours and on Saturdays and Sundays to completely resolve the missing documents. Strengthen inspection, supervision, and rectification of working style, sense of responsibility, and attitude of serving the people of civil servants and employees under their management authority. Notify and apologize to organizations and individuals for the late settlement of records in accordance with regulations.
Units proactively coordinate with tax authorities to unify the content on transfer forms and financial obligations confirmation forms to avoid problems. Mobilize and second civil servants to branches, supplement equipment for surveying, register for granting land use right certificates and scanning archival records.
The Department also recommended that while waiting for the new regulations to be issued, the People's Committee of Can Tho City should propose to allow the branch to receive and return the results of the registration of the security measure at the headquarters, creating convenience for the people.
