Effective, but fraught with difficulties.

Việt Nam•13/05/2024

Headquarters of the Quang Nam Land Registration Office. Photo: TT

Maximize effectiveness

The Quang Nam Land Registration Office was established according to Decision No. 3515 dated September 30, 2015, and reorganized according to Decision No. 3568 dated December 3, 2021, of the Quang Nam Provincial People's Committee.

The Land Registration Office and its 18 branches currently have 357 officials and employees, including 100 officials (40 of whom are in leadership positions) and 257 contract workers.

Currently, the Land Registration Office and 7 branches have their own headquarters, while the remaining 11 branches are located within the district administrative center or share premises with the Department of Natural Resources and Environment.

Regarding the unit's electronic one-stop software, for the land transaction management subsystem (iLIS), administrative procedures and electronic processes have been configured step-by-step for land processing as prescribed; interconnected via electronic transfer slips; linked to processing statuses: paused, request for additional information, and result delivery; updated land and house price codes as prescribed; and linked to electronic tax information transfer.

Processing paperwork at the Thang Binh Branch of the Land Registration Office. Photo: TT

During the period 2020-2023, the Provincial Land Registration Office received 415,130 applications, processed 404,657 eligible applications, of which 27,821 applications were overdue, accounting for 6.9%.

According to the Provincial People's Committee's assessment, the organizational model of the Land Registration Office and its branches has proven effective and positive in centralized direction, management, and operation, ensuring the implementation of land-related administrative procedures in a unified, synchronized, and increasingly professional manner.

Land registration records in the province are being processed uniformly, significantly reducing the situation where each locality has different interpretations and applications; the rate of delayed records has gradually decreased over the years...

Difficulties that need to be resolved soon.

Despite the achievements, the Land Registration Office and its branches have recently experienced delays in processing administrative procedures related to land due to a number of objective and subjective reasons.

According to Pham Cong Chung, Director of the Provincial Land Registration Office, due to historical factors and changes in land law regulations over time, the establishment and management of land records in many localities face inadequacies and difficulties in determining the origin of land use, and re-determining and recognizing the area of residential land in cases where the Land Use Right Certificate states the purpose of use as "residential land," symbolized by the letter "T," or "residential land + garden."

The process of resolving land cadastral records established under Prime Minister 's Directive 299 dated November 10, 1980, but which have not yet been approved, and cases without land records established under Directive 299, takes a long time.

The staff of the Department of Natural Resources and Environment has not been fully recruited according to the assigned staffing quota, their professional qualifications are uneven, and the land and construction staff at the commune level have a low staffing allocation (some localities only have 1 staff member) while the workload is heavy...

Resolving land-related procedures. Photo: TT

In particular, the situation where some legal documents overlap and lack specific guidance leads to inconsistent application among different sectors and branches of the Land Registration Office.

Therefore, in some cases, there is a shifting of responsibility between the Department of Natural Resources and Environment and its branches regarding the authority to handle certain land-related procedures, specifically: issuing initial land certificates, re-recognizing residential land area, confirming planning before land subdivision, etc.

According to the head of the Provincial Land Registration Office, some difficulties and obstacles have arisen recently regarding personnel and finances of the Land Registration Office and its branches, which need to be resolved promptly by relevant levels and sectors.

Regarding personnel matters, the appointment and reappointment of branch leaders in some cases face obstacles because the existing staff do not meet the required standards (due to not yet being appointed to the Grade III Land Surveyor rank). With the current number of staff, each branch has an average of 3-4 staff members (including leadership staff), which is far too few...

According to the job position plan approved in 2023, the target number of civil servants for the Land Registration Office is 186. However, the current number of civil servants is 100, including 40 leadership positions and 60 staff members.

To meet the task requirements, the Land Registration Office signed indefinite-term contracts with qualified and ethical workers to fill the 86 positions still lacking compared to the plan…

Personnel restructuring will be completed in 2024.

At a working session held last weekend to address difficulties and improve the capacity and efficiency of the Quang Nam Land Registration Office and its branches in the coming period, the Alternate Member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam and Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee, Luong Nguyen Minh Triet, requested the Provincial People's Committee and relevant departments to focus on consolidating, reorganizing, and strengthening the system of Land Registration Offices and their branches, completing the recruitment of civil servants by the third quarter of 2024, and consolidating and strengthening the leadership positions of the branches by the end of 2024.

The Provincial Party Secretary requested the Provincial People's Committee to urgently direct a review and adjustment of coordination regulations between the Land Registration Office and relevant departments, agencies, and localities in resolving land administrative procedures. This should be done in a way that clearly defines the authority and responsibility of each relevant agency, unit, and locality in receiving, processing, and resolving applications... to avoid shirking responsibility.

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