Phu Tho Deploys Master Plan for Village Consolidation: High Political Resolve with a Citizen-Centric Core

On the morning of June 8, Mr. Tran Duy Dong—Alternate Member of the Central Party Committee, Deputy Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee, and Governor of the Provincial People’s Committee—chaired a high-level hybrid physical and virtual summit. The executive session officially launched the province’s comprehensive Master Plan on the Restructuring and Renaming of Villages and Residential Sub-districts across all 148 municipalities and wards.

Attending the central assembly were Vice Governor Phung Thi Kim Nga and senior directors from the Provincial Party Committee’s Board of Organization, Board of Propaganda, Board of Mass Mobilization, the provincial Fatherland Front, and line administrative sectors.

Governor Tran Duy Dong delivers his concluding remarks at the summit.

Presenting the strategic blueprint, Mr. Tran Viet Cuong, Director of the Department of Home Affairs, stated that the jurisdiction currently houses 5,049 grassroots units, including 4,444 rural villages scattered across 133 communes and 605 urban residential sub-districts within 15 wards. Under the newly audited rationalization metrics, the province will systematically merge 3,606 existing units to establish 1,639 newly consolidated villages and sub-districts. Upon completion, this structural adjustment will downsize the grassroots matrix by 1,967 units, leaving a streamlined total of 3,082 operational jurisdictions—representing a net reduction of 38.96%.

Regarding human resource redeployment, the province currently has 13,492 non-professional grassroots officers and 40,392 direct community participants. The provincial administration vows to flexibly deploy a phased transitional roadmap to stabilize local political apparatuses while rigorously safeguarding the statutory rights, benefits, and welfare policies of redundant public workers affected by the downsizing campaign.

During the panel debates, municipal leaders and sector directors expressed absolute alignment with the consolidation mandate, noting it directly serves the province’s ongoing administrative overhaul and modern governance goals. Delegates thoroughly analyzed population densities, geographical constraints, and localized bottlenecks, while offering constructive procedural feedback on organizing widespread local plebiscites. Local authorities proposed tailored adjustments regarding the naming criteria for newly formed hamlets, the expansion of municipal cultural houses and sports facilities to meet the new population scales, and advanced capacity-building training for grassroots cadres. Directors of line departments instantly clarified these proposals, providing definitive legal frameworks for redundancy compensation and the post-merger management of community cultural assets.

The summit was held in a hybrid format, connecting to all 148 communes and wards across the province.

Concluding the summit, Governor Tran Duy Dong affirmed that the restructuring of villages and residential sub-districts stands as a core, high-stakes political mandate that is objectively required to match Phu Tho’s newly established two-tier local governance model. The Governor emphasized that the essence of the master plan extends far beyond a mechanical merger of land area or population statistics; it is designed to thin out administrative layers, maximize the executive efficiency of grassroots authorities, and upscale the operational quality of community-led self-governance bodies.

To ensure the highly effective execution of the master plan, the Provincial Governor demanded that all tiers of government, sectors, and localities exercise the highest echelon of political resolve, strictly forbidding any bureaucratic foot-dragging, evasion of duty, or buck-passing, while driving four core target mandates. First, public communication and mass mobilization must move one step ahead through diverse, practical channels to cultivate a deep, widespread consensus among Party members and civilians, strictly honoring the democratic motto: 'People know, people discuss, people execute, people monitor.' The implementation process must remain completely methodical and legally compliant. Communal People’s Committees must cooperate seamlessly with village Party cells to construct granular blueprints and organize public voting sessions for household representatives in a transparent manner. Furthermore, the selection of new village names must thoroughly respect historical origins, cultural traditions, and the legitimate aspirations of the majority.

Emphasizing human resource management and welfare policies, the Governor mandated a rigorous evaluation of cadre competencies to elect capable leaders into key consolidated positions—including village Party secretaries, hamlet chiefs, and heads of the Fatherland Front Working Boards—while ensuring the prompt and full payout of severance packages for redundant staff. Most importantly, the administration must anchor its strategy on a citizen-centric core, providing maximum support to the populace. Local authorities must deploy immediate, precise action plans to assist citizens in updating personal information on their credentials and civil documentations, absolutely preventing any disruption or gridlock in the public administrative transactions of the people.

To concrete these directives, the Governor assigned strict cross-sector workflows. The Department of Home Affairs is tasked with leading the procedural guidance for localized blueprints, coordinating voter plebiscites, and processing redundancy policies. The Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism will steer public messaging, optimize the post-merger utility of cultural facilities, and strictly monitor cyber spaces to penalize any malicious, misleading information. The Provincial Police will maintain an absolute grip on local security baselines, audit residential residency data, and preserve public order to prevent any localized security hotspots. Concurrently, the Fatherland Front and allied political-social organizations will seamlessly cooperate to align community boards and capture public consensus objectively.

Dinh Vu