Officials from a civil verdict enforcement agency in HCMC execute a court verdict relating to a house in District 3.

With the government considering setting up new agencies to enforce civil verdicts in Ho Chi Minh City in the third quarter this year, experts say they should be independent.

“There should be also an association for these agencies,” he said.

He also suggested age limits for their officials. His academy provides training and does research in the judicial field.

Experts also took aim at a draft plan that requires the agencies to get approval from the Civil Verdict Enforcement Agency (CVEA), saying the two agencies are supposed to compete in enforcing the verdicts and one should not be managed by the other.

“We are already overloaded with work and can’t approve documents from the new agencies,” said Vu Quoc Doanh, deputy head of the CVEA.

“The CVEA is not the higher authority of the new agencies and has nothing to do with their work.

“The new agencies operate on their own income and should not shift the responsibility of approving their enforcement work on the CVEA,” he said.

The conference also saw arguments over whether the new agencies can seek support from the police or other personnel to enforce verdicts.

Experts opposed a provision to carve out jurisdictions for each agency based on location but called for fixing fee limits for them.

New agencies

Deputy Minister of Justice Nguyen Duc Chinh said three to five enforcement agencies would be established in the city by December 2010.

The agencies’ tasks will include serving court documents on disputants, recording evidence, examining the feasibility of enforcing verdicts and actually enforcing them.

The agencies, to be the first of their kind in Vietnam, will be overseen by government agencies but will generate their own income.

They would either be private or partnership companies, Chinh said, adding that to start an agency requires a deposit VND100 million (US$5,622) or insurance against possible damages at work.

The fees they charge for enforcing a verdict will be the same as that collected by state-run agencies now – that is, 2.5 percent of the value of the asset involved or based on an agreement with the plaintiff.

The new civil verdict enforcement agencies are expected to help clear an enormous backlog of civil court rulings.

HCMC, with a population of more than 6.6 million, had nearly 46,000 civil verdicts awaiting enforcement by the end of last year.

Reported by Le Nga