The Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee has just sent a document to the Ministry of Home Affairs, reporting on the current status of the arrangement of cadres and civil servants at the commune level.
According to the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee, based on the temporary orientation on staffing when arranging administrative units and organizing local governments at two levels, each commune-level government is currently arranged with about 32 staffing positions.
For commune-level administrative units with a population of over 16,000 people, communes and wards in mountainous and mountainous areas will be assigned 1 additional civil servant for every 1,000 people; for communes, wards and special zones in other areas, for every 2,000 people, 1 additional civil servant will be assigned, but not exceeding 50 positions for communes and 70 positions for wards and special zones.
However, according to the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee, this standard does not meet practical requirements in communes and wards with a large population, concentrated in many industrial parks and production and business establishments.
Currently, the commune level is only allocated 1 Department Head and 1 Deputy Department Head; the Public Administration Service Center is co-chaired by the Vice Chairman of the Commune People's Committee, along with 1 Deputy Director. On average, each commune-level professional department has about 5 - 7 civil servants.
With this structure, each civil servant must average 4 to 9 groups of tasks, each group includes many detailed work contents, large volumes, causing great pressure on the team of grassroots civil servants.
In the immediate future, Ho Chi Minh City has proactively implemented a number of temporary solutions. The Department of Finance, the Department of Agriculture and Environment and the Department of Construction have assigned civil servants and public employees to support 38 local groups of the City Public Administration Center, guiding the reception and processing of administrative procedure records for people and businesses.
In addition, the Department of Construction has seconded nearly 600 civil servants under the Inspection - Legal Affairs Department to 168 communes, wards and special zones to strengthen human resources for construction order management.
However, the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee believes that the above solutions are only short-term, within the authority of the City. For the two-level local government model to be effective, there needs to be fundamental mechanisms and solutions from the Central Government.
The Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee recommends that the Ministry of Home Affairs review, guide and advise competent authorities to issue policies to remove difficulties in the organization and arrangement of commune-level cadres and civil servants, including key contents:
Continue to research and issue priority mechanisms, incentives, and attraction of high-quality human resources to work at the commune level, suitable for the characteristics of large urban areas such as Ho Chi Minh City.
Early advise on the plan to assign civil servant positions and the number of people working in public service units (official) to the new Ho Chi Minh City.
At the same time, report to the Politburo to consider adjusting the principle of assigning staff based on specific factors such as population size, area, urbanization rate, volume of administrative records, etc.
The proposal allows Ho Chi Minh City to assign a general payroll to the commune-level government sector, without distinguishing between the Party, the Front, mass organizations and the administrative sector; the People's Councils at the commune, ward and special zone levels decide on specific allocations according to local realities.
Ho Chi Minh City also proposed that the Government stipulate that localities with a population of 50,000 or more people are allowed to have a maximum of 3 Vice Chairmen of Commune People's Committees, in order to meet the management requirements in the two-level government model of Ho Chi Minh City.
Based on the guidance of the Central Organizing Committee, it is recommended that the Government adjust Decree 150/2025/ND-CP in the direction of increasing the number of deputy heads for 3 specialized departments at the commune level. At the same time, allow the Chairman of the People's Committee of the commune, ward and special zone to proactively decide on the number of deputy heads of each department to ensure flexibility in operation.
Ho Chi Minh City proposed to amend Decree 118/2025/ND-CP, stipulating that the Director of the Public Administration Service Center is a full-time civil servant (equivalent to the Head of the Department) instead of the concurrent Vice Chairman of the People's Committee at the commune level, to ensure continuous, in-depth and effective operation.
Propose that the Ministry of Home Affairs report to the Government to allow Ho Chi Minh City to increase the number of commune-level civil servants by 5-7 to carry out the task of managing urban order, construction order, sidewalks, etc.
