LookAtVietnam – A plan for making laws and ordinances next year was the key topic at the National Assembly meeting yesterday, June 4, in light of amendments needed for several key laws.

Many deputies from HCM City disagreed with Article 42 of the draft regarding the issuance of operation licences to hospitals and clinics, which states that hospital licenses are valid for five years and only three years for other health examination and treatment establishments. (Photo: VNN)

Agencies in charge of drafting and appraising laws and ordinances are being required to submit these legal documents to the assembly quickly and to ensure the changes are feasible and respond to the needs of the public.

Thanh Hoa deputy Nguyen Van Phat said that in the past, some compiling offices had not completed regulated procedures in drafting legal documents and failed to present them to the assembly on time.

Many deputies said they had been put under pressure to examine some draft laws in too short a period because they were sent to them too late.

This had made it difficult to gather opinions from the public and experts.

“There is a widening gap between the creation of laws and the actual demand of reality and people’s desires,” Hai Phong deputy Tran Ba Thieu said.

Phat said the quality of some drafts was low with inadequate analysis included. Compiling offices in charge failed to gather opinions from people at the grassroots level and built laws without reference to the actual development situation in each city or province, which is even worse, he said.

“This means there is top little information to issue draft laws,” Phat said.

Deputies cited such legal documents as the Land Law, which was one among several key issues receiving a lot of public attention that did not get approved in this year’s assembly plan.

A different concern brought up by Da Nang deputy Nguyen Thi Kim Thuy was that compiling offices might not have the capacity to produce quality work, if they had to finish draft laws in accordance to the rate of progress regulated by the NA.

“We should not ask an office to draft several laws at the same time,” she said. The Ministry of Justice, for example, has to prepared five draft laws to present to the NA for approval this year.

Ha Noi delegate Chu Son Ha and Vinh Phuc delegate Pham Van Toan disagreed with Thuy. They felt there should be a policy created to punish compiling offices, which failed to present their draft laws to the NA in accordance with the NA’s approved agenda programme.

Toan said it was not uncommon to see draft laws put in and then withdrawn from the NA agenda, which adversely impacted the law making process.

Consensus was reached that the quality of the process for building laws and ordinances must to be improved in the future.

Deputies were informed that citizens had lodged the most complaints surrounding issues with land, and that the global economic crisis had triggered a demand to complete the revised Land Law, the Law on Deposit Insurance and the Budget Law in next year’s NA programme.

They also asked the NA to discuss and make amendments to laws relevant to the State organisation to serve the 13th NA election and the people’s councils election to be held in 2011.

Law on health examination and treatment

Lawmakers also discussed the draft Law on Health Examination and Treatment yesterday.

Many deputies from HCM City disagreed with Article 42 of the draft regarding the issuance of operation licences to hospitals and clinics, which states that hospital licenses are valid for five years and only three years for other health examination and treatment establishments. These agencies must apply for an extension when the validity is set to expire with the health ministry or health departments at cities and provinces.

Deputies Tran Du Lich, Tran Van Tam and Trinh Kim Hong said the regulation would create an ask-and-give mechanism and was unreasonable.

At a round-table discussion, Lich asked others to consider how detrimental it would be for people if, for example, a big hospital like Cho Ray Hospital failed to extend its licence after the five-year period.

Deputy Hong said State-owned hospitals and other health treatment units had already been granted a certificate recognising, their establishment, and it did not make sense to require them to have another certificate for the same purpose.

Currently, there are 13,439 State-run health examination and treatment establishments and 84 private service providers nation-wide.

There was a general agreement that the Health Examination and Treatment Law was a necessary tool to help gradually improve the quality of health care and meet rising demand for services. However, deputies said the law should be better named the Law on Health Practice.

A majority of deputies agreed to the granting of medical practice certificates to health workers of State and private establishments.

Viet Nam has about 300,000 people delivering health care nationwide. Due to the sheer number, it was recommended the granting of certificates be done gradually, with priority even to those with seniority.

Deputies said the draft should incorporate how to deal with protecting the rights of patients from medical malpractice, salary increases for doctors and health workers at State-owned establishments, and whether or not doctors are permitted to sell medicine and receive commission from pharmaceutical companies when they prescribe medicine for patients.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News