THỪA THIÊN-HUẾ — Vietnamese and Japanese city administrators met at a conference held over the past two days to discuss the issues of administrative management that localities in the two countries encounter.

They also share solutions to solve the issues to achieve better management at city governments.

Speaking to open the conference on Monday, Vietnamese Minister of Home Affair Lê Vĩnh Tân said the conference was a chance for the two countries’ to learn from each other.

He added that the experiences would be the reference for the possible modification of Vietnamese Law on organising local government valid since 2015.

During the two days, officials from the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications delivered speeches explaining the local administration in Japan in general as well as going into details of the local government system of Sapporo City.

Takeshi Miyaji, Deputy Minister of Japanese Internal Affairs and Communications, said Japan’s local government management included two levels, the prefectural and the municipal. The country has 47 prefectures and 1,718 municipalities, which refer to designated cities, core cities, special cities, cities, special wards, towns and villages.

“Relation between the central government and local governments is not between the higher and the lower levels but they are the same level,” he said, adding that local governments are independent from the central government and they cooperate on work.

On the Vietnamese side, officials from the Ministry of Home Affairs introduced the conference to the structure of Vietnamese local government system as well as management issues.

Assc Prof Ngô Thúy Quỳnh from Việt Nam National Academy of Public Administration said Việt Nam lacked experiences on organizing and applying local government model.

“The country works clumsily on the application of local government model in HCM City, Đà Nẵng and Hà Nội. We don’t have enough experience as well as we have no profound experts on the field thus we failed to build up a successful model,” she said.

She said the country had a lot work to do to foster the building of a local government model, including law modification and building up a capable labour force for the model. — VNS