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Take note of this if u can setting up a labour intensive biz in VN...............

HCM City suffers from post-Tet labour shortage
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VietNamNet Bridge – On the first day returning to work after Tet, the seventh day of the Lunar New Year this year, each worker at the Onamba electronic harness manufacturer in Binh Duong Province received VND300,000 ($15) as "lucky money" from the company's leader.


The lucky money, on top of the festival bonus, is one of the incentives the company has offered to encourage its employees to return to work after Tet. Despite this, many of the workers have not returned after the year's biggest holiday.

Onamba Vietnam, headquartered in Osaka, is among many labour-intensive companies facing the endemic problem of post-Tet labour shortage.

For the past several years, enterprises based in export processing zones (EPZs) and industrial parks (IPs) in particular have faced a mass exodus of workers who've finished their annual contract and tend not to come back after the Tet holiday.

Onamba has lost 20 per cent of its 700-strong labour force after the week-long holiday, said Nguyen Hoang Anh, who is in charge of the company's labour recruitment.

Most of them quit to look for other jobs, he said.

"This year we have the largest number of workers quitting after Tet," said Anh, "despite the fact that the company has given them better living and working conditions."

The company has provided a free bus service for workers to travel between work and home as well as housing allowance, said Anh.

HCM City-based Thong Nhat Rubber Company is also facing a labour shortage with hundreds of workers not having returned after Tet.

"The number of workers not returning after Tet has increased every year," said head of the company's Administrative Organisation Board, Do Hoang Tri.

The company recruits nearly 2,000 people each year to replace the ones who've left, he said.

Statistics cited by a recent report in the Nguoi Lao Dong (The Labourer) newspaper said that companies based in HCM City's EPZs and IPs need to recruit around 10,000 workers after the holiday, mostly in electronics, mechanics, garment and food processing sectors.

The demand for manual labour accounts for 60 per cent of the post-festival recruitment and the rest are workers with high professional skills, the report said.

Deal sweetners

To make up for the shortage of workers after Tet, many companies had made plans to begin recruiting people immediately after the festival and some began doing so even before the holiday.

Onamba Vietnam said that it would start recruiting 200 new workers next week, offering housing allowances and free transportation to work. Workers on one-month probation will be paid 90 per cent of the full salary and contracted workers will get an extra monthly allowance.

Two HCM City-based companies, Nidec Copal at the Tan Thuan EPZ and Nissei Electric Vietnam at the Linh Trung EPZ, have been recruiting thousands of workers since they resumed operations after the Tet holiday early last week. Both firms are offering free accommodation and full travelling allowance in order to lure applicants.

Nissei Electric has promised to pay VND1.85 million ($90) as basic monthly salary plus allowances ranging from VND400,000 ($20) to VND1.5 million ($75) per month, said Dang Thi Hai Y, who handles the company's recruitment programme. Recruited workers will enjoy free accommodation and transportation.

The company will also pay VND300,000 ($15) to anyone introducing a worker who is recruited, Y said. However the attractive offers and availability of jobs have failed to attract sufficient numbers of applicants, company representatives said.

Employment agencies recruiting people for most of the companies based in EPZs and IPs in HCM City say they used to see the largest number of job applicants of the year after Tet. But this year, they are experiencing a drought.

"The number of people looking for jobs after Tet is the smallest this year," said Nguyen Thanh Tung, head of an employment agency in HCM City. While some people are still in a holiday mood and enjoying time with their families, the main reason for the lack of applicants is that most of them are looking for jobs in their home towns, he said.

High inflation in recent years has resulted in an increase in the cost of living in big cities, which makes it all the more difficult for workers whose wages have not improved significantly. So they prefer to work in their home provinces or nearby locations, where they might earn less but do not have to deal with high living costs.

This has prompted many companies to contact provincial authorities and agencies directly in the hope of recruiting workers, especially in the central region that is the largest provider of workers to HCM City, said Truong Thi Tuyet Van, who heads the human resources department at the Tan Thuan EPZ-based Japanese-owned Furukawa Automotive Parts Vietnam company.

Meanwhile, the last few years have seen a large number of industrial parks established in agricultural provinces, creating jobs for locals. This is another reason why the migrant workers in big cities are returning to their home provinces to work.


VietNamNet/Viet Nam News