On June 20, the National Assembly discussed in groups the draft Law on Forces Participating in Protecting Security and Order at the Grassroots Level.

Through discussion, delegates all agreed on the necessity of developing this draft law to arrange and deploy forces participating in protecting security and order at the grassroots level in a unified, complete, and streamlined manner, associated with perfecting functions, tasks, and working relationships, improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the forces participating in protecting security and order at the grassroots level; further improving the quality and efficiency of State management of security and order at the grassroots level; building a synchronous, unified, and highly legally effective legal system, regulating the tasks, activities, and force building, ensuring the operating conditions of forces participating in protecting security and order at the grassroots level.

Building ward and commune facilities into "fortresses" of security and order

Speaking at the group on the draft law, clarifying some issues of concern to delegates, Minister of Public Security To Lam said that the work of ensuring security and order of the Ministry of Public Security with the goal stated in the Resolution of the Congress is to build an orderly, disciplined, and safe society, where all people enjoy happiness and peace, no one is threatened, no one has their right to freedom of residence, living, working, and economic development affected.

“In the Resolution of the 13th Party Congress, we have summarized a very new point, which is to pay attention to security and safety. It is not only national security, territorial sovereignty, and the sustainability of the regime, but security and safety must come to individuals and each person. Our goal is to bring a peaceful, prosperous, happy life, giving people the most leisurely life, without having to worry or fear about losing safety,” Minister of Public Security To Lam emphasized.

Minister of Public Security To Lam: Building ward and commune bases into "fortresses" of security and order.

Minister of Public Security To Lam said that the Ministry of Public Security has systematically deployed and assigned specific tasks from the Ministry to provinces, districts and communes. The most important goal is to stick to the grassroots, that is, to care for each family and each person.

“We see this as very important and have set a goal of building wards and communes into "fortresses" of security and order. Strengthening regular police in communes is to carry out that task. However, commune police are not enough to ensure security and safety, but we must mobilize the masses to participate and reform administration to serve the people right at the grassroots level,” Minister To Lam affirmed, adding that in the past, when people needed to transact, they had to go to the province or district, now those administrative procedures have been assigned to the commune level. Previously, they had to be resolved directly, now there is no need to contact but they can be resolved online.

“Such reforms are very important to the people. We will build communes without crime and drugs. This is a very big goal,” Minister To Lam emphasized, adding that crime, drugs, and social evils all arise from the grassroots, and people know about them, so the government and police must know about them to solve them. Therefore, it is necessary to build this force to help the police and government grasp the situation, detect conflicts among the people, and solve crimes.

“In addition, at the commune level there is a lot of work to do, from rescue, fire prevention, conflict resolution, management of rehabilitation of criminals, people released from prison... We have currently arranged 5-6 police officers in each commune, in the near future in areas with complicated security, each commune will have 1 security officer; if the drug problem is complicated, there will be a drug expert, and there may be an investigator to handle crime reports according to regulations, and there must also be people for administrative procedures. Because there is so much work, the police cannot have enough force, one person has to do many jobs. Therefore, we need support force”, said Minister To Lam.

Meanwhile, in reality, there are many legal regulations but no law specifically regulates this force. This is an existing force, performing tasks at the grassroots level related to the people's freedom and democracy, so if it is not regulated by law, it will not be guaranteed to perform its assigned tasks well.

The Minister of Public Security also clarified that the forces stipulated in this law are all existing forces at the grassroots level such as militia, part-time commune police, and civilian guards. The law only gathers and unifies enough forces to perform all tasks at the grassroots level such as fire prevention and fighting, rescue, and relief...

The incident in Dak Lak shows that security at the grassroots level cannot be ignored.

According to Minister of Public Security To Lam, many places say they want stability to develop, without stability there is no time to discuss projects and develop the economy and society.

"For example, in Nghe An and Ha Tinh, when the Formosa incident happened, we had to discuss it for a whole year, so where would we have time to discuss socio-economic development? Or in Dak Lak and the Central Highlands, there was just one incident like that, so we cannot take this task lightly," said Minister To Lam.

According to Minister To Lam, the budget for this force has been carefully calculated, without increasing the cost because for the previous part-time Commune Police, the provincial budget spent all of it. Currently, the regime for Commune Police is the responsibility of the Ministry of Public Security, the remaining part is for the security force at the grassroots level, which has been greatly reduced compared to before. Besides, this force does not have its own headquarters, it can operate at the Commune Police headquarters, community activity houses, so it mainly only needs to be equipped with support tools...

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