The series of articles “Difficulties in merging villages in mountainous, remote and isolated areas – seen from practice” by the group of authors: Nguyen Quan Tuan – Tran Van Quoc – Nguyen Thi Huong – Quach Ha Duong – Ha Ngoc Mai – Nha Bao va Cong Luan Newspaper won the C prize of the 17th National Press Award - 2022. This shows the recognition of the National Press Award Council for authors with excellent, invested, dedicated and far-reaching journalistic works in society.

Listening to “Voices from the Grassroots”

Reflecting on the difficulties of merging villages in mountainous, remote and isolated areas, a group of reporters from the Journalist & Public Opinion Newspaper spent many months recording the reality in some mountainous, border, remote and isolated provinces of the Northern region, to listen to some of the "voices from the grassroots" surrounding this issue.

In accordance with the spirit of Resolution 18-NQ/TW of the Party, localities have reviewed all villages and residential groups and developed a project to merge villages and residential groups. This merger has received attention and positive response from local authorities and people.

However, in reality, in addition to the achieved results, the "stereotypical" application of the criteria in Circular 04/2012/TT-BNV (after that, the Ministry of Home Affairs repeatedly amended and supplemented a number of articles of Circular 04/2012/TT-BNV; most recently, the amendment and supplement in May 2022 - Circular 05/2022/TT-BNV) of the Ministry of Home Affairs guiding the organization and operation of villages and residential groups has caused many localities to "make things difficult" for themselves, especially in mountainous areas, remote areas, thereby giving rise to many difficulties and shortcomings.

According to the guidance of the Ministry of Home Affairs, the merger of villages in localities is mainly based on three main factors: standards on the number of households, area and similar cultural identity. The establishment of new villages in the northern midland and mountainous provinces must have 150 households or more (previously the regulation was 200 households); villages in border communes must have 100 households or more.

For villages with households below 50% of the prescribed size, they must be merged. In "special" cases, the village size is from 50 households or more... If "applied" according to the general "framework", the merger of villages and hamlets in mountainous areas, remote areas, and isolated areas will encounter many difficulties and shortcomings when implementing this work.

The series of articles has pointed out the huge difficulties and obstacles in merging villages and hamlets in remote areas due to the large area, fragmented terrain, difficult transportation, and scattered population... Organizing activities and propagating policies and guidelines to the people is a "difficult problem".

The group of reporters went and recorded the reality in Dao Vien commune, Trang Dinh district, Lang Son province; Duc Long commune, Thach An district, Cao Bang province - all of which are areas with borders with China. In these places, there are still many difficulties and the implementation of merging villages and hamlets here has revealed shortcomings from ensuring full criteria of villages as instructed by the Ministry of Home Affairs, which is difficult to implement. Meanwhile, the difference in the culture of the ethnic groups living in the "merged" villages is also an existing shortcoming that needs to be considered and resolved.

The group of reporters also raised some issues arising from practice that need to be adjusted appropriately to further promote the leadership role of the village Party Cell. In the places the group of reporters visited, through listening to opinions from the village Party Cell Secretaries and leaders of the Party Committees of the communes, they all found that the areas of the merged villages and hamlets were too large, making it very difficult to directly propagate policies and guidelines to the people. Although the hamlets (equivalent to the village organization) were merged, the people still lived in "each hamlet in its own hamlet" as before.

In particular, the biggest difficulty is that between villages, different ethnic groups, the administrative boundaries are too far apart, when merged, it will affect the quality of community life, Party cell activities, as well as the propaganda, mobilization, and implementation of the Party and State's policies and guidelines, which will be difficult to be "complete" as before. Also because the area is too large, not close to the people, "close" to the people, it is difficult to promote the role of direction and leadership of the village Party cell. The article also reflects the reality that after merging villages and hamlets, "some places have excess, some places lack village cultural houses", not ensuring the material facilities for all activities of the Party cell, organizations and people.

Promoting the role of the press in policy making

The article raised the issue: After the village merger, the work of "non-professional cadres" became heavier but the regime and allowances remained the same, causing many people to worry. Therefore, in some places, it is very difficult to find dedicated village "cadres" to be close to the people, to propagate the policies, laws of the Party and the State to the people. From the above issue, the policy problem for non-professional activists in the village is really difficult in the localities.

In addition to the content on local practices, the group also interviewed National Assembly delegates, leaders of the Ministry of Home Affairs, and former leaders of the Ministry of Home Affairs to propose solutions to improve the institution to help the implementation of village and hamlet mergers to ensure compliance with legal regulations but also in accordance with the reality of each locality.

After the Journalist and Public Opinion Newspaper published the series of articles, it received many positive responses from authorities at all levels and local people. In particular, Minister of Home Affairs Pham Thi Thanh Tra expressed her appreciation for the series of articles that reflected reality, expressing genuine and lively "critical" voices from the grassroots.

Responding to the Journalist and Public Opinion newspaper, Minister Pham Thi Thanh Tra clearly stated a series of solutions to reorganize villages and residential groups in the coming time, overcoming the shortcomings and difficulties as mentioned by the Journalist and Public Opinion newspaper. In particular, the Ministry of Home Affairs is building a dossier of the Decree, proposing to amend and supplement all regulations on commune-level civil servants and non-professional workers at commune, village and residential group levels. In particular, there is a related policy regime for "village cadres" after the merger that the Journalist and Public Opinion newspaper has reported.

At the same time, the Ministry of Home Affairs also informed that after the Law on Implementing Democracy at the Grassroots Level is promulgated, the Ministry will send a document to 63 provinces and cities to evaluate and summarize the entire process of implementing current legal regulations on villages and residential groups. This includes policies for non-professional workers, the arrangement and merger of villages and residential groups in the past; to see if there are any shortcomings, obstacles, or difficulties and propose amendments to the Circulars and regulations, especially Circular 04/2012/TT-BNV as reported by the Journalists and Public Opinion Newspaper.