HCMC – The business performance of Pouyuen Vietnam Co., Ltd, which is located in HCMC’s Binh Tan District, has been adversely affected as over 33,000 of its 56,000 workers temporarily stopped going to work for various Covid-19-related reasons since the beginning of the year, said a representative of the company.
Cu Phat Nghiep, president of the labor union division at Pouyuen Vietnam, said that around 10,000 workers residing in the neighboring province of Long An have stayed at home since July 12 due to the province’s travel restrictions to fight the coronavirus. Over 3,500 others who live in Tien Giang and Ben Tre provinces also had to stay away from work for the same reason. These workers earlier commuted to work on the company’s shuttle buses.
Besides, nearly 20,000 others had to stop going to work as they either were infected with Covid-19 or linked to confirmed cases and thus had to remain under quarantine or lived in lockdown areas. Some others proactively asked for a leave of absence due to the pandemic.
As for the salaries and benefits of employees, Nghiep said that the company has paid its employees June’s salaries and allowances, including those who did not come to work. However, this month, the company will speak to employees about salary payment plans, as many of them were off from work for more than 14 days per month.
While a large number of employees temporarily stopped going to work, a number of employees went to work but failed to focus on assignments over pandemic worries, Nghiep added.
The labor union division has made efforts to encourage them and issue guidelines for them to cope with the disease, but they remained ineffective. The division will propose the company seek more effective solutions to address the issue, he continued.
The company currently has many urgent orders, but the labor shortage has slowed down the manufacturing activities and thus affected the fulfillment of orders. If the firm fails to deal with customers to extend the order processing time, it could face reputational damage as well as have to compensate for the late fulfillment, he said.
In the latest outbreak which began on April 27, Pouyuen Vietnam has been coordinating with the local health authorities in detecting Covid-19 cases, conducting Covid-19 tests and tracing contacts of the confirmed cases, among other measures, a representative of the city’s health authority confirmed.
Since July 4, the company and local competent forces have discovered 35 people of the firm were infected with Covid-19 and thousands of other employees had to be quarantined.
