VNExpress-June 16
State workers in several HCMC wards and communes are swamped with work because of a gross mismatch between the number of staff and their workload. It was past 5 p.m. a day in early June and one could hear the sound of papers being sealed and flipped nonstop at the office of the Vinh Loc A Commune People’s Committee in Binh Chanh District. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the office remains open until 6:30 p.m. to serve people who are normally occupied during the office’s working hours. The commune receives around 350 administrative records every day, but the office has just 36 people working now. “Sometimes there are way too many files to handle but we cannot leave them for the next day because there are papers that would expire within three days,” An said.
She said she has never experienced such work pressure before 2021. Ever since HCMC streamlined its administrative apparatus last January, she has had to take many extra jobs as her team was downsized from 35 to just five members. With more than 167,000 people, Vinh Loc A is the most populous commune in HCMC. Its population is equal to half of the northern province of Bac Kan Province and equivalent to that of Phu Nhuan District. However, the civil servant payroll assigned for commune has stayed at 36, compared to 1,489 for Bac Kan and 436 for Phu Nhuan. Read more at: https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/too-much-work-not-enough-people-hcmc-s-streamlining-failure-4476485.html
