The cumbersome, opaque and non-merit-based administrative system in Vietnam is nurturing corruption, local inspectors and international aid donors said at an anti-corruption meeting in Hanoi Tuesday.
They said the government needed to reform employment policies, specifically those dealing with salary and assessment.
The meeting, organized twice yearly in the lead-up to the Vietnam Consultative Group Meeting, also hailed the important role the media has played in fighting corruption.
Tran Van Truyen, the chief government inspector, said the country considered fighting corruption a “national priority” and would “fight till the end.”
Nguyen Hoa Binh, vice director of the Interior Ministry’s Administrative Reform Department, said corruption was caused by not only “retrograde and degenerate state workers” but also “ineffective and non-transparent management.”
Meanwhile, Ayumi Konishi, ADB Resident Mission Country Director, said the Vietnamese administrative model did not encourage self-improvement in state workers.
Hired for a lifetime tenure, state officials and civil servants knew their future did not depend on their performance and were therefore complacent, he said.
They did not risk taking personal initiative and preferred to obey their superiors without question, he added.
Human management, as a result, was inflexible and could not adjust to changing situations, he said.
Mathieu Salomon, an anti-corruption advisor from the Swedish embassy, said the government should make its employment system more objective.
It should develop a transparent public administration with clear criteria for assessing personnel when it came to employment and promotion, he said.
Dinh Van Minh, vice director of the Institute of Inspection Science, proposed that the government consider developing a code of conduct law for state workers and a salary plan that could ensure stable living standards enabling them to focus on fulfilling their tasks.
Media role
Inspector Truyen said the government “respects the media’s work” in fighting corruption and said that the media played an important part in Vietnam’s anti-corruption strategy.
He cited an example in which the government canceled the promotion of a tourism official after the media blew whistle on his tainted past records.
He was referring to Nguyen Quoc Ky, who was assigned to the post of acting chief of the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism in March.
Local media found out later that Ky had been caught initiating and taking bribes in 1990.
Ky was then demoted in May.
However, Truyen said that journalists and reporters should “conform with the press law and the laws in general.”
“They must ensure the accuracy of their information and be responsible for it,” he said.
Reported by Kap Thanh Long
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