Promoting the spirit of service, constantly improving the effectiveness of consular work and citizen protection

On June 1, at the Ministry's headquarters, the Party Committee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs held a conference to disseminate information on improving the effectiveness of consular work and citizen protection abroad in both direct and online forms.

Bộ trưởng Ngoại giao Bùi Thanh Sơn: Phát huy tinh thần phục vụ, không ngừng nâng cao hiệu quả công tác lãnh sự và bảo hộ công dân

Member of the Party Central Committee, Secretary of the Party Committee, Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son chaired the conference to disseminate information on improving the effectiveness of consular work and citizen protection. (Photo: Tuan Anh)

The conference was chaired by Party Central Committee member, Party Committee Secretary, Minister of Foreign Affairs Bui Thanh Son and attended by members of the Party Committee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs , leaders of units within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and all Vietnamese representative agencies abroad.

At the Conference, the Consular Department reported on the situation of consular work and citizen protection abroad. Accordingly, in recent times, despite many difficulties and challenges, consular work and citizen protection have been well implemented, contributing to promoting foreign relations, supporting and protecting the legitimate rights and interests of Vietnamese citizens and legal entities abroad.

Besides positive results, this work still has some outstanding and emerging issues, revealing limitations and shortcomings that need to be overcome.

Some Vietnamese representative agencies abroad have contributed ideas on educating staff of representative agencies on raising awareness of the spirit of serving the people in consular work, and at the same time shared the advantages and difficulties in implementing the work from a local perspective.

Units of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also proposed many practical solutions to strengthen consular work and citizen protection abroad, such as: promoting the role of Party committees and organizations in inspecting and supervising cadres and Party members in performing their duties; perfecting the mechanism for mobilizing and arranging personnel; enhancing the role and responsibility of heads of representative agencies in preventing and combating corruption and negativity.

The conference to disseminate information on improving the effectiveness of consular work and citizen protection abroad was held in both in-person and online formats. (Photo: Tuan Anh)

Concluding the Conference, Foreign Minister Bui Thanh Son, Secretary of the Party Committee of the Ministry, emphasized that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs builds a clean, strong, comprehensive, modern, professional diplomacy and all the pillars of the diplomatic sector, including consular work and citizen protection, serve this goal.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has identified the need to continue to improve consular and citizen protection tasks, considering research and institution building as the foundation; the task of perfecting regulations, procedures, and administrative reform as a breakthrough.

In addition, the Ministry will continue to attach importance to training and fostering staff; combining the promotion of information technology application with the utilization of mass media methods in implementing consular work at home and abroad.

To better perform the assigned tasks, the Minister directed relevant units in the Ministry to review and complete legal regulations on consular affairs; develop and perfect procedures for handling consular affairs, especially promptly issuing a new Circular on handling consular affairs in a more professional and strict manner.

The Minister also requested to strengthen the direction and guidance of consular work for representative agencies; continue to improve the quality of training and fostering of staff doing consular work.

In particular, the Consular Department and units within the Ministry will soon study and accelerate the digital transformation roadmap, bringing administrative procedures for providing public services domestically and at representative agencies to a new level in the electronic environment; strengthen inspection, examination and supervision to detect and strictly handle violations and shortcomings, if any.

Panorama of the Conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Headquarters. (Photo: Tuan Anh)

The Minister especially emphasized the goal of serving the people; cadres must be servants of the people as President Ho Chi Minh advised.

The Minister requested the Consular Department and Vietnamese representative agencies abroad to use people's satisfaction as a measure of work efficiency, contributing to building a clean, strong, comprehensive, modern, and professional diplomatic sector.

Regarding the tasks of representative agencies, the Minister requested to strengthen the leadership of Party committees, the role and responsibility of heads of representative agencies in consular work, along with raising awareness and responsibility of Party committees, heads, cadres and Party members about the important meaning of consular work.

Representative agencies need to thoroughly grasp the training in politics, ideology, professional qualifications, public ethics, and promote the spirit of "service" for all representative agency staff in general and staff performing consular work in particular.

Representative agencies also need to create a synchronous and strong change in implementing the standardization of regulations and procedures, arranging staff to ensure capacity, political qualities, and ethics to participate in resolving consular work, along with measuring the actual level of people's satisfaction as a basis for improving and enhancing service efficiency; strengthening inspection and supervision mechanisms to promptly correct and prevent violations and errors from occurring.

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