Vietnam railway is very outdated and degraded … but up to now, it is still in a state of ‘head go, stay leg’.
According to Mr. Vu Anh Minh, Chairman of Vietnam Railway Corporation (VNR), when transferring to the State Capital Management Committee at enterprises, the industry is still tasked with operating and exploiting the entire structural system. railway infrastructure. But the railway infrastructure is under the management of the Ministry of Transport, which leads to a situation of “head going, feet remaining”. Use maintenance money According to previous regulations, at the beginning of the year, the Ministry of Transport carried out the assignment of the budget capital estimates to the VNR. After that, the unit will place an order for public services with 20 affiliated companies to perform the railway maintenance. On December 31st, the company organized to take over and check assets to continue the maintenance cycle of next year. From 2019, VNR transferred to the State Capital Management Committee at Enterprises, no longer under the Ministry of Transport, so this ministry did not continue to assign capital to non-industry units. Therefore, in 2020, VNR once called for help because it was not assigned capital. Then, based on the resolution of the Government, the Ministry of Transport temporarily assigns capital to VNR to carry out the maintenance. However, by 2021, the plan to assign VND 2,800 billion to any maintenance unit has not been removed. The reason is that the project on management, use and exploitation of national railway infrastructure assets made by the Ministry of Transport has not been approved after many submission to the Prime Minister because of differences in opinion. Specifically, the Ministry of Justice believes that the fact that the Ministry of Transport assigns the maintenance cost estimates to the VNR for implementation is not contrary to the current law. At the same time, there is no need to go through unnecessary intermediaries, slow down the progress of the mission, directly affect the safety of the train. “If assigned to the Railway Bureau, there will be many problems such as inconsistent with the Law on Railways …” – The Ministry of Justice stated. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Finance believes that the assignment of budget estimates for railway management and maintenance to VNR is not in accordance with the provisions of the State Budget Law in Clause 1, Article 49. On this basis, the Ministry of Transport proposed the Government to hand over money for railway maintenance to the Railway Administration, and then return it to the VNR according to the comments of the Ministry of Finance. However, VNR does not agree with this plan. The profit that VNR has will be paid to the budget and annually the budget will allocate about 2,800 billion VND for railway system maintenance. Photo: V.LONG According to which law is reasonable? According to Mr. Vu Anh Minh, currently all railways in countries around the world, the ownership, management, maintenance, and operation of national railway infrastructure assets invested by the State are allotted to businesses. state industry implementation. State-owned enterprises directly manage, maintain, trade in properties and operate. State management agencies do not directly manage, exploit and trade assets, but only properly perform state management functions such as policy making, planning, inspection, and inspection of the implementation of management. property management, exploitation and trading … Currently, VNR is managing 3,143 km of railways passing through 34 provinces and cities. In order to maintain this entire infrastructure, the VNR must organize an asset management system from the parent company level to the member units and the majority shareholding companies. Currently, the industry has 11,315 employees. In which, 1,241 labors of bridge week, road patrol, tunnel week; 915 workers indirectly perform the task of planning and cost estimating the maintenance of the works …; 6,278 maintenance work and quality management of maintenance work; 2,881 employees on duty guarding the crossroads to ensure train operation safety. Therefore, the proposal of the Ministry of Transport will break the consistency between the management and maintenance activities of railway infrastructure with the safety of train operation and railway transport business, delaying the operation. to mobilize railway transport, to eliminate railway transport. “Because then VNR will have to operate railway transportation in the condition that the national infrastructure system is divided, lack of synchronous coordination due to too many entities to manage and operate. This will break the principle of “unification, concentration” – the most basic and key principle in railway transport activities of the railway ever since … “- Mr. Minh said. Meanwhile, Mr. Le Hoang Minh, Director of the Department of Transport Infrastructure (Ministry of Transport), said that the Ministry of Transport’s implementation of the budget for the maintenance of the national railway system to the Railway Administration is is implementing in accordance with the current provisions of the State Budget Law 2020. “The Ministry of Transport must base on the current regulations, can not arbitrarily do any problems without grounds” – Mr. Le Hoang Minh emphasized. The fact that the units leading the Railway Law 2017 stipulate a number of powers for the VNR, including the authority to manage and maintain the national railway infrastructure, Mr. Minh affirmed the budget and financial issues. The main law is to comply with the State Budget Law (general law), while the 2017 Railway Law is a specialized law. However, according to an expert, it is necessary to apply the law in a flexible way, to completely solve this problem, how to create the most favorable conditions for railway maintenance, to avoid people thinking that there is Money is scrambled. “With the package of railway infrastructure maintenance, I think that it is reasonable to assign it to the VNR, if it is assigned to the Railway Bureau through many unnecessary intermediaries, there may be a mechanism for asking – giving …” or. • Invite 20 units but can not sign the contract yet According to the report of the Vietnam Railway Administration, after being assigned with the plan and estimate by the Ministry of Transport, in January 2021, the department drafted a contract to order railway infrastructure maintenance. The Department has invited 20 maintenance units to negotiate and sign orders for orders, but so far the units do not sign contracts. The reason is that VNR, which currently accounts for more than 50% of equity in these companies, does not agree to the member units to sign contracts with the Railway Administration. This is the reason why the contract negotiation has been delayed. “Therefore, the information that the Ministry of Transport and the Vietnam Railway Administration do not assign budget estimates to the VNR and its member units is not the correct nature” – Mr. Le Hoang Minh informed.
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