HCMC – Around 30,000 workers who are temporary residents of Bac Giang Province, which is the biggest Covid-19 hotspot in the latest coronavirus wave in Vietnam, will return to their hometowns nationwide between June 12 and 15.
The returnees include workers who are pregnant or are raising children younger than six months of age; the elderly with underlying conditions; recovered Covid-19 patients; people who have had close contact with coronavirus cases, completed quarantine requirements, tested negative for the virus and are eligible for home quarantine, reported Tuoi Tre newspaper.
Besides this, workers in lockdown areas who have undergone Covid-19 RT-PCR tests with negative results many times and want to come back home are entitled to return.
According to a local official, when the pandemic broke out in this northern province, the authorities had adopted measures to retain over 60,000 workers in the province to prevent the disease from spreading to other localities. The authorities then offered support to the workers to help them weather the pandemic.
However, the 22,000 people in concentrated quarantine centers, especially at the major coronavirus hotspot of Viet Yen, due to their exposure to Covid-19 patients, have made it difficult for the authorities to offer adequate medical care to them. Accordingly, the local authorities are working with their counterparts in various localities in the country to take the workers back to their hometowns.
Nguyen Tien Coi, director of the provincial Department of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, said that local industrial zones are maintaining their operations, while ensuring compliance with Covid-19 preventive measures, but their demand for employees remains low. Around 10,000 employees are eligible to return to work, but in reality, only a half have tasks to do.
Coi added that returnees can go back to Bac Giang for work when their employers resume full operations.
He revealed that Hanoi, Bac Ninh and Ha Tinh cannot say no to returnees at the time as the pandemic is raging in these areas, while other provinces and cities are planning to receive the returnees.
In case Bac Giang fails to reduce the number of workers by half as planned, it will prioritize carrying workers to their hometowns which accounts for a large number of workers coming to Bac Giang such as Cao Bang and Thai Nguyen at over 3,000 workers and Nghe An, Thanh Hoa, Son La, Ha Giang, at 2,000-3,000 workers each.
The relevant localities will need to support Bac Giang to arrange vehicles to transport the returnees and have to take measures to minimize transmission.
