Lawmakers emphasises need for measures to protect denunciators

Many deputies noted an outstanding feature of the revised draft law is to contain more specific regulations on the protection of accusers. It has three groups of protection measures: personal information; life, health, assets, honour, dignity, prestige and other personal rights; and working positions and jobs of accusers.

Deputy Luu Binh Nhuong from the Mekong Delta province of Ben Tre suggested that the legislature should collect recommendations of people, especially those involved in denunciations, in order to propose forms and scales of protection. The concept of kin subject to protection should be based on the definition as regulated in the Civil Code.

According to Nhuong, denunciation cases must be classified, so that specific protection measures are carried out for serious cases with possible threats to the denunciators.

Sharing the same view, deputy Nguyen Thanh Hai from northern Hoa Binh province said that the draft law has extended the subject to protection to include people with certain relationship with the denunciator. .

According to him, the subject of protection should be proposed by the denunciator and be limited to a certain scale as the issue is related to financial and human resources to carry out the work. 

In terms of denunciation forms, there remain different ideas on the expansion of denunciation forms.

Deputy Bui Van Xuyen from northern Thai Binh province emphasised the need to regulate only two forms of denunciation, through written petitions or face-to-face forms in the current stage. He noted that at present, only 15-20 percent of denunciations are accurate, while 60 percent of denunciations are wrong, and the remaining contain both right and wrong information.

If denunciation forms are expanded, the agencies handling denunciations will have to deal with too many issues and face a lot of difficulties, which can affect the law’s feasibility, he added.

Meanwhile, several said that the recognition of only the current two forms of denunciation is out-of-date, in the context of the fourth industrial revolution. The use of SMSs, fax or email will create favourable conditions for citizens to exercise their right to denunciation.