A conference was held in the northern province of Quang Ninh last Saturday to discuss measures to boost the connection between National Assembly (NA) deputies and voters.

At the conference, which was jointly organized by the NA Office, the NA’s Ombudsman Committee, the Representative Office of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Foundation and the European Union, attendants shared experiences and discussed solutions to boost the connection. Speaking at the event, Nguyen Manh Cuong, permanent member of the NA’s Justice Committee, pointed out that only 0.6 percent of the country’s 56 million voters are in contact with NA deputies every year on average. Therefore, he said, NA delegates should strengthen their relationship with voters to understand voter aspirations and provide avenues for voter to express their opinions to the NA and other competent agencies for timely consideration. Meetings can be organized focusing on a specific topic, such as education, traffic infrastructure, electricity supply, health care, or law, so that NA deputies can receive more specific, professional and profound opinions, Nguyen Thi Hong Ha, deputy head of Hanoi’s delegation of NA deputies, advised. In addition, deputies should arrange, with the assistance of local authorities, to contact voters at public places such as stadiums, theatres or supermarkets, said Nguyen Thanh Binh, head of the Ombudsman Office under the Department of Democracy and Law of the Vietnam Fatherland Front Central Committee. In general, a common difficulty faced by Vietnamese NA deputies in contacting voters is that they do not have their own offices because of limited financial conditions, said Ngo Tu Nam, vice director of the NA Standing Committee’s Committee for Deputy Affairs. Therefore, NA deputies usually need assistance from relevant agencies or local authorities in receiving and handing in voters’ opinions, Nam said at the conclusion of the conference.