Salary increases are investments in development, creating motivation for the public sector apparatus.

Recently, the National Assembly voted to pass the Resolution on the state budget estimate for 2024, including the content on implementing salary policy from July 1, 2024. The total central budget source for salary reform is expected to be about 132 trillion VND; the accumulated source of local budgets is about over 430 trillion VND.

Thus, the budget has allocated 562 trillion VND to ensure sufficient implementation of synchronous salary policy reform from July 1, 2024 according to Resolution 27/2018 of the 12th Central Committee on salary policy reform for cadres, civil servants, public employees, armed forces and employees in enterprises.

According to the Government's calculations, to implement salary reform, the total expected additional budget demand from the budget in the period of 2024 - 2026 is more than 499 trillion VND. Of which, the expenditure for salary reform is 470 trillion VND, pension adjustment is 11.1 trillion VND and preferential allowance for meritorious people is 18 trillion VND. The average salary of civil servants and public employees increased by 32% compared to the average income of workers.

It is expected that the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs will submit to the Government a plan to increase the regional minimum wage. In recent discussions at the National Assembly, many delegates proposed increasing the regional minimum wage at the same time as the roadmap for implementing wage reform from July 1, 2024.

"Through four salary reforms, I have never seen a salary policy as synchronous, comprehensive, and fundamental as this one. This is a new salary policy that is very progressive, fair, truly harmonious, and reasonable," said Minister of Home Affairs Pham Thi Thanh Tra.

Investing in wages is investing in development.

Expressing his opinion, Dr. Bui Sy Loi, former Vice Chairman of the National Assembly's Social Committee, said that salary reform on July 1, 2024 is the right time to ensure that workers can live on their wages.

Mr. Loi commented that in reality, the salaries of cadres, civil servants and public employees are still not enough to meet the needs of life, making it difficult to create a team of professional, dedicated and efficient civil servants. The urgent and necessary task ahead is to accelerate the reform of salary policy to ensure the lives of workers. At the same time, ensure that the salary paid is commensurate, reflecting the true value of the labor of cadres, civil servants and public employees.

For the sector with labor relations, wages must meet the minimum living standards of workers and their families (according to the provisions of the Labor Code). For the public sector, spending on salaries for officials and civil servants is spending on development investment. Therefore, Mr. Loi believes that it is necessary to reform wages so that they are truly an important driving force to encourage officials and civil servants to improve their capacity to perform their duties more effectively and reduce corruption.

According to Mr. Bui Sy Loi, salary reform in current conditions is good news for civil servants and public employees, creating motivation for them to be interested in working, promoting increased labor productivity and attachment to their agencies and units.

Investing in salary is investing in development, salary is too low, forcing cadres and civil servants to do many jobs to earn more income. In addition, low salary is not enough to live, leading to the consequence that cadres, civil servants and public employees lack motivation to work, do not dedicate themselves fully because salary does not reflect the true value of labor that this force contributes to the agency, unit.

The nature of civil servant salaries is that along with the development of the market economy, salaries must approach the value of market labor, and must aim for fairness and reality. It is necessary to build a minimum salary for administrative civil servants equal to labor.

"Therefore, reforming salary policy must ensure a living wage for officials and civil servants according to job position, title and leadership position, in accordance with State resources and public service revenue, ensuring a reasonable correlation with wages in the labor market," Dr. Bui Sy Loi stated his opinion.

Dr. Bui Sy Loi said that our country always considers people as the center, the goal, and the driving force of development.

Salary reform to attract talent

The goal of wage reform is to ensure that workers have enough to live on their wages. In particular, it is necessary to consider regulating specific allowances for specific sectors. At the same time, to retain workers working in those sectors as well as attract talented professionals to the public sector to overcome the situation of a number of cadres, civil servants and public employees moving from the public sector to the private sector.

Our country always considers people as the center, the goal, the driving force of development. To achieve the goal, to realize this ideology, implementing salary reform, ensuring the material life of workers, cadres, civil servants and public employees is extremely important.

According to Dr. Bui Sy Loi, the important thing is to create motivation to retain public sector civil servants, to motivate the public sector apparatus. From there, ensure a living wage so that cadres, civil servants and public employees do not have to "have one leg longer outside than inside", and wholeheartedly perform the functions and tasks assigned according to the job position of the sectors and fields.

In addition, according to Mr. Loi, we need to carefully review and evaluate the current situation of a team of public sector civil servants and officials spilling over into the private sector. "In the 4.0 industrial society, human resources are extremely valuable. We must strive to have a progressive society, the 4.0 industrial revolution must be about working less and enjoying more. The most important thing is to apply information technology, digital technology, and the digital economy to minimize manual labor while still increasing labor productivity," said Dr. Bui Sy Loi.