Ministry of Health and Welfare holds on-site briefing Friday at Gwangju City Hall for civil servants from South Jeolla Province and Gwangju; existing projects exempt from consultation, new ones processed through batch pre-consulting

[Yonhap]
[Yonhap]

The Ministry of Health and Welfare held a briefing Friday at Gwangju City Hall for civil servants overseeing social welfare projects in South Jeolla Province and Gwangju, outlining streamlined consultation procedures ahead of the administrative merger of the two regions.

The session was organized to help the welfare system of the newly merged Jeonnam-Gwangju Special Metropolitan City take root quickly after the city officially launches Wednesday.

The briefing focused on simplifying consultation procedures to minimize the administrative burden on local governments managing the large-scale overhaul of social welfare projects during the merger, and to ensure residents experience no interruption in welfare services.

Existing projects that South Jeolla Province and Gwangju had been running — and will continue unchanged after the merger — will be exempt from the consultation process. Their information will also be updated in bulk in Haengbok e-eum, the government's social welfare project management system, so project details can be retrieved quickly.

For projects newly created or modified after the merger, the ministry will replace the existing case-by-case consultation process with a batch pre-consulting system. Welfare project lists scattered across multiple departments will be consolidated and submitted together, allowing consultation issues to be resolved early and reducing administrative workload.

Projects submitted after incorporating pre-consulting results will be classified as fast-track priority reviews, cutting the processing period from 60 days to within 30 days.

Application forms will be simplified to reduce paperwork, and the ministry will share in advance a list of projects it has consulted on since 2013 to help local officials file consultation requests smoothly.

The briefing will also feature expert advisory sessions by region alongside the procedural guidance, with the aim of minimizing confusion on the ground.

Im Hye-seong, secretary-general of the Social Security Committee, said the merger of South Jeolla Province and Gwangju marks "a critical turning point for balanced regional development." She added that the ministry would "do its utmost to ease the burden on local governments through outreach consulting and on-site briefings, and to ensure that residents receive the welfare benefits they need without delay."

The ministry plans to firmly shift its role from regulation-focused to support- and consulting-focused, and will apply the same support framework to future administrative mergers in other regions.


thlee@heraldcorp.com