Lao Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith has asked the country’s Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA) to take prompt action to streamline the apparatus of state organisations so as to improve the performance of officials and public employees.

Lao Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith (Photo: VNA)

At a MoHA meeting on 14 February, the PM said Laos currently has 184,871 public employees, accounting for 2.8% of the population. That excludes members of armed forces that consist of military, police, and local militia.

As such, the rate of public employees in Laos is the second highest among the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), following Brunei.

He also pointed out several works that need special attention and prompt implementation in order to swiftly streamline state agencies’ apparatus.

Facing the increasingly inflated but inefficient apparatus of state agencies, the Lao Government decided to reduce the number of public employees recruited annually from over 10,000 to 3,000 in 2018, and this year down to 1,500.

PM Sisoulith said the recruitment quota reduction aims to help state agencies recruit truly capable people, thus helping to improve their efficiency and ease the burden on the state budget.

In 2018, the Lao PM issued a decree on streamlining the machinery of all state agencies and assigned the MoHA with the implementation.

(Source: VNA)