HCMC – The northern province of Bac Giang on May 25 announced a plan to gradually reopen four industrial parks (IPs)–Dinh Tram, Quang Chau, Van Trung and Song Khe-Noi Hoang–in Viet Yen District, which were closed on May 18 to prevent the spread of Covid-19.
According to the province, the move is aimed at ensuring safe production, while fighting against the pandemic, stabilizing jobs for laborers and preventing global supply chains from breaking as many enterprises in the province are the key suppliers of these chains, the local media reported.
Eight enterprises will first resume their operations from May 28, after the competent agencies check and assess their safety on May 27.
Nguyen Nguyen Thai, deputy director of the Bac Giang Industrial Zone Investment Support Center, said the resumption of production activities would be done step by step and in phases. Enterprises must meet pandemic prevention and control requirements to resume their operations.
From May 23, teams have been inspecting some enterprises and assessed that some are eligible for resumption.
The reopening of the four IPs will be divided into two stages: producing amid the complicated developments of the pandemic and returning to a new normal state after the pandemic is brought under control.
The first stage started from May 26, when the competent agencies started instructing enterprises to resume operations from May 28. Enterprises must quarantine their workers for at least three days and test all of them and provide vehicles to transport the workers.
Only workers who have got a negative result after two Covid-19 RT-PCR tests are allowed to return to work.
In the first month, enterprises must conduct Covid-19 tests for their employees every week. In the next few months, the tests must be conducted randomly on half of their employees before the 15th of the month.
In the second stage, workers who test negative for Covid-19 twice will return to work and enterprises must conduct random tests on 10% of their employees before the 15th of the month.
New employees also need to test negative for Covid-19 twice with the tests taken seven days apart.
Bac Giang is home to many large factories in global supply chains, including 13 suppliers of accessories for Samsung and many partners of Foxconn and LuxShare.
The province has six IPs with some 240,000 workers. It is the largest pandemic hotspot in the country in the current Covid-19 wave.
