HCMC – HCMC may face a shortage of some 60,000 workers in the first quarter of next year if the Covid-19 pandemic continues unabated in coming months, according to the municipal Department of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs.
At a teleconference between the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs and provinces on support for pandemic-hit residents and solutions to help reboot the labor market, a representative of the HCMC Export Processing and Industrial Zones Authority (Hepza) said many enterprises had gradually adapted to the current Covid-19 situation while ensuring safety in production, so only 50%-70% of factories had resumed their operations.
The number of employees at industrial parks and export processing zones in the city who returned to their hometowns accounts for 11% of the total. Some 1,300 of them returned to the northern region and 3,500 others to central provinces.
Enterprises in HCMC have been calling on and arranging vehicles to transport these workers back to the city.
A representative of Pouyuen Company in Binh Tan District said 75%-80% of workers of the company had got back to work and production would be back to normal when workers from Tien Giang and Ben Tre provinces come back. The company is working out a plan to transport some 11,000 workers between the company and Long An Province.
According to the HCMC Department of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, it has coordinated with Hepza and the management board of the Saigon Hi-Tech Park to learn about the enterprises’ hiring demand.
The HCMC Job Service Center and a job service center under the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union in HCMC will launch an online job exchange and introduce jobs among unemployed people and accommodation for workers from other localities.
The HCMC government has assigned the municipal Department of Transport to develop a plan and facilitate enterprises to arrange vehicles to transport workers from other provinces to HCMC.
Commenting on the labor market in HCMC, Minister of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs Dao Ngoc Dung said the city faced a labor shortage after the pandemic but the situation was not so serious. The number of employees of foreign-invested enterprises and those at industrial and export processing zones has not fluctuated much. Most people who left the city for their hometowns are freelancers.
According to the municipal Department of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, as of October 30, some 1,300 enterprises with over 200,000 workers out of a total of 1,400 enterprises in industrial and export processing zones in HCMC had resumed operations.
This quarter and in the first quarter of next year, enterprises in the apparel, food processing and electronics sectors are recruiting 200-1,500 people each, the local media reported.
