The Ministry of Home Affairs is drafting a Decree adjusting the monthly allowance regime for youth volunteers who completed their missions in the resistance war and youth volunteers in the Southern region who participated in the resistance war from 1965 to 1975.

The Ministry of Home Affairs said that recently, the monthly allowance for youth volunteers has not been adjusted in time with the adjustment of the social assistance standard (the allowance level from 2016 to present has remained unchanged at 540,000 VND).

The Ministry believes that adjusting and increasing the subsidy level for youth volunteers is extremely necessary, contributing to ensuring life and reducing difficulties for youth volunteers, who have devoted their youth to the two resistance wars of the Fatherland, and are now old, weak, and lonely, with no one to rely on.

Accordingly, the Ministry of Home Affairs proposed two subjects of application, including: youth volunteers who completed their missions in the resistance war and are receiving monthly allowances according to Decision No. 40/2011 of the Prime Minister; youth volunteers in the Southern base who participated in the resistance war from 1965 to 1975 and are receiving monthly allowances according to Decree No. 112/2017 of the Government.

In the draft decree, the Ministry of Home Affairs proposed a monthly allowance equal to twice the standard social assistance level prescribed in Decree No. 76/2024 (amending and supplementing a number of articles of Decree No. 20/2021 of the Government) regulating social assistance policies for social protection beneficiaries. The adjustment period is from September 1, 2025.

Accordingly, the monthly allowance for youth volunteers will be adjusted from 540,000 VND/person/month to 1,000,000 VND/person/month (equal to 2 times the standard social assistance level) from the local budget. Accordingly, each youth volunteer will receive an additional 460,000 VND/person/month.

The draft decree also stipulates that the monthly allowance is twice the standard social assistance level instead of being specified in a specific amount as before. At the same time, the adjustment of monthly allowances for youth volunteers is linked to the adjustment of the standard social assistance level.

According to the Ministry of Home Affairs, this regulation aims to ensure that subsidies for youth volunteers are automatically and promptly adjusted whenever the Government adjusts the social assistance standard without having to issue a separate decree on adjusting subsidies for youth volunteers.

Also according to the draft decree, if a youth volunteer dies from September 1, 2025 but has not had his allowance adjusted according to this regulation, the funeral organizer will be entitled to receive the difference in the allowance adjustment from September 1, 2025 to the month the youth volunteer died.

According to statistics from the Ministry of Home Affairs, at the time of drafting the decree (as of December 31, 2023), the number of youth volunteers receiving monthly allowances was 3,668 people (of which, the number receiving benefits under Decision No. 40/2011 was 3,650 people and the number receiving benefits under Decree 112/2017 was 18 people).

Thus, the total additional cost per month is: 3,668 people x 460,000 VND/month = 1,687,000,000 VND. The additional cost per year is 20,244,000,000 VND.

"If we calculate the average of 63 provinces and cities today, each province will only increase by more than 26,000,000 VND/month and about more than 300,000,000 VND/year. Thus, the resources from the local budget will not increase significantly compared to before the adjustment," according to the report of the Ministry of Home Affairs.