In a recent petition sent to the Ministry of Home Affairs, Ho Chi Minh City has asked for permission to have 10,700 civil servants for this year instead of the 7,100 approved earlier by the ministry.

The city said the increase in workforce is needed for efficient completion of tasks assigned and approved by higher authorities.

These include removing the legislative agencies of inner city wards and districts from the middle of this year and merging the three districts of 2, 9 and Thu Duc to make a "city within city" called Thu Duc City, which will start functioning this March.

This is not the first time the city is in need of more public servants to complete its administrative tasks, the petition notes.

In 2015 and 2020, the ministry allowed the city to have just 8,313 and 7,227 public servants while it needed more than 13,000 for 2015 and over 11,600 for 2020.

The city has also been trying its best to streamline its apparatus to meet the government’s target and cut the number of state workers on its payroll by 2 percent each year.

However, in reality, it has been struggling with a lack of staff to serve the people and businesses.

Currently, one government worker in HCMC serves 364 people on average, twice as high as the national average.

The average population of a district administrative unit in the city is about 239,000 higher than that of the whole country.

HCMC, the nation’s economic hub, is currently home to 13 million people, including migrants.

Last October, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc approved a proposal to reduce the number of government workers by around 4,000 to 249,650 this year.

That would leave 247,344 workers in state agencies and administrative organizations, and the rest in diplomatic missions abroad, associations and civil service reserves.

The PM had in 2017 instructed government offices to pare their payroll by 1.5-2 percent a year over the next five years.

The government payroll was cut from 265,100 in 2018 to 259,598 the next year and 253,000 last year.