Agency asks 51 employees to resign due to lack of money

The Ben Luc District Interior Office in the southern province of Long An has requested that 51 local civil servants voluntarily resign, or the authorities will cross them off the payroll.

Many of these civil servants told Tuoi Tre that they were very upset by the request, since they had passed civil service exams before being recruited to State agencies and all of them have fulfilled their jobs without receiving any disciplinary actions.

They said they are very worry for their careers since the authorities may issue decisions to make them redundant at any time.

One of these civil servants is T., who passed a local civil service examination in 2011 and was assigned to manage house and land issues in a commune in the district.

“All of a sudden, the head of the Office called me and many others to the agency and asked us to make letters of resignation. We asked why and the official said the province authorities don’t have enough funding for salary payments for us, and anyone who voluntarily quits their job will be given half a monthly’s salary as support,” T. said.

The civil servants who voluntarily resign will be provided with a semi-professional job in the district, and those who refuse to do so will be removed from the list of civil servants, T cited the official as saying.

The Provincial Department of Interior had not known about the case until March 20, when it was reported by a family of which a member was compelled to resign.

District-province argument

In talking with Tuoi Tre, the head of the Office, Nguyen Thi Kieu Nga, explained that these people were recruited as civil servants under an alternate personnel program for the 2008-2012 period under a decision of the provincial People’s Committee.

It was expected that these people would replace a number of existing civil servants who could retire, resign or be transferred by the end of 2012, but most of them have remained in office, so the wage funds became insufficient to pay for both new and old civil servants, Nga said.

“Therefore, the office has to call on these 51 civil servants to resign, and we can then use them as semi-professional cadres; otherwise, the district authorities will make them redundant.”

Le Vinh, deputy head of the provincial Department of Interior, said that under the decision by the provincial authorities, the provincial budget would pay salary for alternate civil servants only for 2008.

In the years afterwards, the district budget must cover the salary payment, Vinh said.

Meanwhile, Huynh Quoc Viet, chairman of the district People’s Committee, told Tuoi Tre yesterday that the provincial People’s Committee is responsible for remuneration for these 51 people on a permanent basis, not only for 2008, but recently, the provincial authorities announced that they would not continue to pay after the first quarter of this year.

“Therefore, we have to re-arrange because the district is unable to afford salary payment to these ‘redundant’ civil servants,” Viet explained.

By the end of the same day, Tuoi Tre learned that only 20 of these 51 civil servants will be retained to work normally, while the remaining 31 will be made redundant, of whom 15 will be re-arranged as semi-professional employees.