Interestingly, efforts to declare Luang Prabang as the country‘s first municipality
failed after a number of years of discussion. The reasons for this are to do with status. The
Luang Prabang authorities decided that they could not accept municipality status since it
infers a level of authority only at the same as a district, and would therefore represent little
change from the current situation. In addition there is an issue of terminology. In the Law the
word used in Lao (as in Thai) for municipality is thetsaban‘. However, in past decades (pre-
1975) the thetsaban in Laos was responsible only for waste collection and other urban
cleaning functions. This is not the image that Luang Prabang wants to portray. In Vientiane
there have also been ongoing discussions about its status for several years. Early concepts
were that it would be a municipality, but the Law on Local Administration set the level of
municipality too low to be appropriate for Vientiane. The district authorities within the
Vientiane urban area have also been resistant to change as it would reduce their powers.
Vientiane is now established as a Capital City, although there is no provision as such in the
Law.