BBC Vietnamese interviews Edmund Malesky about Vietnam's efforts to reduce bureaucratic redundancy
The BBC News Vietnamese article titled "Cán bộ dôi dư: níu chân người tài, lưu dụng người yếu?” explores the challenges Vietnam faces in reforming its public sector workforce. As part of a major administrative reform, the government is offering financial incentives for early retirement and voluntary resignation to reduce bureaucratic redundancy.
In an interview for the article, Edmund Malesky, professor of political economy and director of the Duke Center for International Development, cautioned against top-down mandates, suggesting bottom-up approaches be implemented like skill-based job matching with private, state-owned and foreign companies, and training programs to support the process of finding a new job.
Malesky also called attention to the need for the government to eliminate "ghost civil servants," who are ineffective.
“The problem is not about identifying ‘ghost civil servants.’ The question is that after having identified them, whether the government has enough political will to remove them," he asked.