The workers from MJ Apparel Ltd. Co. in Bien Hoa Town said under the company’s regulations, each worker was allowed to use the bathroom just two times per shift.

A report by the Bien Hoa Labor Union said that in each group of 50 people, only three people were allowed to go to the bathroom at a time, closely watched by security guards.

The report also said that the company was not paying the workers’ social and health insurance as regulated and the meals served were very poor in nutrition.

The town’s labor union on the same day asked the MJ Apparel comply with labor regulations, including removing restrictions on the workers’ bathroom use.

From http://www.thanhniennews.com

Unlike last year, many enterprise leaders are not hesitating to speak openly about their workers’ Tet bonuses.

“It is likely that the year-end bonus for employees and staff will be higher than last year’s,” said Duong Van Manh, deputy director of May 1 Automobile Manufacturer.

According to Do Huu To, director of Huu To Aquaculture Company in Quang Ninh Province, bonuses for workers in the company would rise by 20 per cent this year.

Nguyen Thi Le Hong, president of the Board of Directors of Dong Nai Food Industry Corporation, said that the bonuses for workers in corporate enterprises would be about VND1 to 2 million (US$51 to $102) higher than last year’s bonuses.

According to Dao Ngoc Hoang, head of the province’s Labour and Social Affairs Unit, of the 20 enterprises that had submitted bonus and salary proposals for Tet holidays, all of the companies will give bonuses that will equal one or two months salary to their employees.

Director of the Labour and Salary Department under the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs Tong Thi Minh said that the bonuses for the Tet holidays would be satisfactory.

However, Le Thi Thuy Van, an expert from the Academy of Finance, said that in the context of the increased consumer spending, such increases would not amount too much.

More at http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn

A 2008 survey by the Viet Nam General Confederation of Labour revealed that 227 young people among 416 workers had died on the job last year, while fatalities for the first six months of this year were 95 out of 175 workers.

All of them were of working age, ranging between 18 and 30 years old.

Nguyen An Luong, chairman of the Labour Safety and Hygiene Association, said that most young labourers relied on their good health and ignored safety regulations.

“Training courses on labour safety and hygiene are ineffective, despite the fact that young workers attend them regularly,” Luong said.

They are usually offered risky jobs at complicated and narrow construction sites. Many of them are reckless and put themselves in danger,” Vinh said.

The popular causes of these accidents were toxic chemical spills, electric shocks, being cut by sharp objects and falling from high places, he said.

More at http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn

The HCM City Centre for Forecasting Manpower Needs and Labour Market Information, which surveyed 27 industries, said the demand for workers was rising with the recovery in the economy.

The sharpest rise in demand is seen in sectors like food processing, home appliances manufacture, interior decoration, minor construction works and, with Tet (the lunar New Year) approaching, for seasonal workers like waiters in food and beverage outlets and shop assistants.

The survey found the November manpower-demand index in the manufacturing and processing sectors rising four times from the previous month and the demand for managers rising by 1.3 times.

The manpower shortage is a problem that has persisted in the last few months.

More at http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn

Do Thanh Dong, director of Bac Ninh Job Placement Centre, said that he had received orders for thousands of workers in the last few months.

However, he said the number of qualified candidates accounted for just 25 per cent of the total demand.

Nguyen Xuan Chinh, head of the Ha Noi Industrial Zones Management Board, said the number of employees working in the city’s eight industrial zones was 6,000 more than the same period last year.

He said the number of investment projects had increased this year, resulting in higher demand for labour.

Meanwhile, it is a similar story in HCM City.

More at http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn

This is the conclusion drawn by two independent working groups who have conducted a weeklong inspection of enterprises across the city.

The results will be combined into a final report to be submitted to the labour ministry and the municipal People’s Committee by the middle of this month.

“The inspections by an inter-agency working group focused on enterprises employing a high number of foreign employees. For this year, we set a target of checking from 80 to 100 such enterprises – between two and four a week,” Xe said.

Another inspection team under the labour department inspected a total of 400 enterprises operating in HCM City, including those employing foreign labourers.

One common violation, according to Xe, is that enterprises employ foreign workers ineligible to work in Viet Nam.

Although the foreigners had failed to apply for working certificates, companies still continued to hire them.

In addition, some foreign executives, particularly in the footwear and textile industries, brought their relatives to Viet Nam to work claiming they needed skilled workers.

According to the department General Inspector Huynh Tan Dung, many enterprises intentionally employ foreign workers without making any declarations to the labour department or providing their profile to authorities.

Others claiming they did not employ foreign workers were found to be doing so when inspectors checked payroll sheets.

Dung said: “We are not always able to discover all the violations due to a shortage of inspectors.”

Xe complained that present administrative fines were “just like a slap on the wrist”.

According to the current law, no matter how many foreign workers employers illegally hire, they receive a mild fine from VND5-10 million (US$250-500).

“A construction enterprise hiring dozens of foreign workers is punished the same as a business firm employing one or two international experts,” Xe said.

From http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn

Unlabeled dried fruits on sale at the Binh Tay market in HCMC

TUOI TRE

Ho Chi Minh City health inspectors announced Wednesday they found lead-tainted dried fruits in a wholesale market.

Inspectors started collecting dried fruit samples from Binh Tay market in HCMC’s District 6 in mid October for testing.

The inspection was made after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on October 1 released a warning that consumers should not eat 18 dried fruits imported from 15 producers and distributors, mainly from China, because of excessive lead levels found in the products.

Malaysia on October 8 also announced it banned the import and sale of all 18 lead-tainted dried fruits identified by the FDA.

According to the HCMC Health Department, most dried fruit samples taken from 20 shops in the Binh Tay market have higher lead content levels than permitted under safety regulations.

Lead is toxic to organs and body tissue including the heart, bones, intestines, kidneys, and reproductive and nervous systems.

The Ministry of Health regulated foods cannot contain more than 2mg of lead per kilogram since the metal is toxic and cannot be removed easily from the human body.

Vendors at the Binh Tay market said the prices of dried fruits imported from China were getting cheaper by the day. Pointing to cost as the reason why they imported large shipments from Chinese suppliers while ignoring food safety and quality certificates.

“If you want to buy a ton (of dried fruits) in a day, I still can sell it to you,” a shop owner said. “It’s from China, it’s easy.”

From http://www.vietnewsonline.vn

It is part of the daily ordeal of more than 30 children aged 12 to 16 which were hired to make metal washers at the facility.

The giant stamping machines which are much bigger than the child-operators leave no time for the children to spare. The under-aged workers are forced to plug their ears with whatever they can find to escape the deafening sound of the machines.

Their work is often interrupted by the scream of a child who has been hit by metal pieces flying out of their machine or was struck by the machine after they feel asleep due to exhaustion.

“We work from 6:30a.m. to 9p.m. a day while chasing after the speed of the machine,” a 12-year-old worker named T at the factory said. “We have some spare time at noon and at 5:30p.m. to eat and for a drink made of tea and sugar before resuming our work.”

“We don’t even dare to stand up or drink water for fear of being scolded by our boss,” the kid who has spent half a year working at the factory said.

Tan Phu District is notorious for businesses using child-labor there.

A 12-year-old boy from Mekong Delta’s Kien Giang Province works on a stamping machine TUOI TRE

An official from the HCMC Department of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs said it was not rare to find the cases of child laborers being forced to work 100 hours a week in the southern hub.

The department found in its latest survey this year 62 out of 173 inspected production facilities used child laborers, 149 of whom were under 16-years-old.

The kids are forced to work ten to 14 hours a day without being given any education, many are over-exploited by their employers.

Besides long hours at the job, the kids also receive no labor contract and little payment for their efforts.

“What is a labor contract?” 15-year-old Le Van Nhat from central Quang Ngai Province, who has been working for a garment factory in the district, asked.

Nhat said he had no idea how much he was paid and the factory’s owner only told him he would receive his wages at the end of this year so he would have enough money to visit his hometown.

An official from the district’s Department of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs said there were in fact thousands of unregistered production facilities which were exploiting under-aged laborers.

A sweat-shop employing the factory’s 30 under-aged laborers TUOI TRE

The department’s head Phan Anh Nhan said child labor was a common problem for the city but it was not an easy task to tackle the problem as local authorities are facing a lack of staff.

Phan Thanh Minh, head of the HCMC Department of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, says the city’s problem with child labor has yet to be stamped out as ten percent of the children in HCMC were migrants coming to the city looking for work.

“Those using child laborers are mostly family or individual businesses,” she said. “The employers often hire children who come from their hometown and claim the kids are their relatives.”

The children often work at the back of the facilities and have little contact with people around the areas, making it more difficult to detect the cases of violation, according to the official.

Minh said more involvement of local authorities, police and residents into cracking down on child exploitation would be needed to find solutions to the problem.

From http://www.vietnewsonline.vn

Please sir, may I have another?
Child laborers are forced to work up to 16 hours a day at some garment factories in Ho Chi Minh City

TUOI TRE

Children, some as young as six years old, are spending their childhoods working as street hawkers or in dingy garment factories for up to 16 hours a day.

It is a dark reality, common in developing countries like Vietnam where poor children are withdrawn from school to become bread-winners for their families

Although Vietnamese law prohibits the employment of children under 15 years of age, children still normally share the workload and household responsibilities with their family, both in rural and urban environments, according to international NGO, International Save the Children Alliance in Vietnam.

Vietnam has yet to conduct an official investigation into child labor but according to several surveys of the living standards in Vietnam during the 1997-1998 and 2004 period, about 30 percent of Vietnamese children at the age of six to 17 join the labor force, Lao Dong (Labor) newspaper reported.

Most of the kids stayed close to home, helping out with the family business. But a report released in December last year by the Ministry of Labor – Invalids and Social Affairs, Vietnam said that 26,027 children are working in hard labor conditions in hazardous environments.

Child laborers can be found in gold mines, timber operations, cargo transport and other hazardous occupations.

In urban areas, many children are employed as domestic servants, assistants in restaurants or shops, street vendors, shoe shiners, sweepers and scavengers.

The pandemic of child labor has spread to not only the poverty-ridden areas but also to some of the most prosperous parts of the country, such as Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

The unsuspected HCMC public was hit by the alarming news of a 16-year-old boy admitted to the hospital last week as a result of being overworked and underfed for a long period of time.

Nguyen Van Den, a resident from central Hue City, was moved to the hospital after collapsing at a garment factory in HCMC’s Tan Phu District.

Trouble breathing

The doctor said Den had trouble breathing, heart failure and a lung infection, a direct result of exhaustion and a lack of vitamin B1 in his diet.

Den said he was forced to work 14 to 16 hours a day from 6a.m. until midnight and received constant beatings from the factory’s owner whenever he showed signs of exhaustion.

“The Tet holiday is coming so I have to work until one to two o’clock in the morning,” Den told Tuoi Tre. “Whenever I make a mistake, my boss, Nguyen Thi Chau A, would slap me or hit me on the head.”

With only four hours of sleep a day, the 16-year-old boy only weighs 35 kilogram, making him resemble a 10-year-old.

Den was among the six employees 16 to 23-years-old that were found working at the facility. Each of them work more than 100 hours a week with no labor contract and receive next to nothing for their work.

After the case became public, Den’s employer, A, bought two train tickets for Den and his mother to go home and refused to pay his wages for the past nine months, claiming the boy “had no health problem”.

Duong Van Chuong, A’s husband, also claimed their exploitation of child laborers is standard in the garment industry.

“That is just a normal thing, other facilities also do (this),” Chuong said. “It is because we are doing subcontracting work for low prices.”

The use of under-age laborers is prevalent among some local employers who want to save costs and have more control over their employees.

Underage laborers

In HCMC alone, up to 62 out of the 173 local production facilities, were found to use child laborers, according to a survey of the HCMC Department of Labor – Invalids and Social Affairs conducted from February to September this year.

Up to 50 percent of them are hiring laborers under the age of 15.

Most child laborers come from poverty-ridden areas and they are hired to do jobs which often include long hours of work, wages far below the minimum rate, a lack of basic facilities, physical and mental abuse and assorted health hazards.

The jobs range from selling chewing gum and lottery tickets on the street to working as jockeys, construction workers, and tailors at local garment factories.

Some are even forced to become beggars, prostitutes or petty criminals.

Early this month, Tuoi Tre publicized some controversial photos of groups of adults who used youngsters to beg on the streets.

The photos of a three-year-old child with no pants left lying on the cold, hard concrete floor at night in front of a theater in HCMC’s District 3 under the watchful eyes of a group of adults nearby enraged the public and revealed a dark corner of human life in the southern hub.

Considerable income

These cases have repeated across HCMC and the country, bringing considerable income to the ‘runners’ who use poverty as an excuse to force children on to the city’s broken pavements.

“Only after working here for a year did I receive the payment for my first month,” 17-year-old Chung Van Duong, who has been working for a garment factory in HCMC for the past three years, told Lao Dong (Labor) newspaper.

The boy has spent years working and living with nearly 20 child laborers at the facility. Ten out of the 20 kids sleep on the factory floor each night.

But Duong said his wages went straight to his parents after they had made “a contract” with the factory owner to receive advance payment for his work even before Duong started at the factory.

Since 2000, the Vietnamese government has been teaming up with the International Labor Organization to raise public awareness on children protection, bringing children back to school and helping rescued children.

From http://www.vietnewsonline.vn

Pham Nhat Cuong, 14 and Dang Thuy Duong, 15, work very hard but they don’t know how much they will take from their employers at the year’s end.

On October 30, a Tuoi Tre reporter visited a private garment enterprise at 173/20 Thoai Ngoc Hau Street, Phu Thanh Ward, Tan Phu District, accompanied by Phu Thanh ward officials and police officers.

In a small room of several dozens of square meters, nearly ten workers were busy working.

Sitting among piles of cloth was a half-naked boy.

Meet Le Van Nhut, 15, from Quang Ngai.

Nhat said that he works daily from 7.30am to 11.30am and then from 1pm to 5.30pm and from 7pm to 11pm. He had no weekend or day off.

Tuoi Tre asked Nhat about his work contract and he replied “What is a work contract?”

He did not know how much his salary is because his employer promised to pay Nhat at the year’s end.

Same same, but illegal

Tuoi Tre reporters and Phu Thanh officials visited other enterprises, where most of workers told the same stories. They have to work over 80 hours a week, with no weekends and no extra pay.

While their employers sat next to them, some workers said that they do have labor contracts.

When asked about the details of their contracts, such as health and social insurance, they all said they didn’t understand what these things were.

These “workers” are children from many places, mainly Quang Ngai and Thai Binh as well as some southwestern provinces.

At a room of house No. 553/21 in Luy Ban Bich Street, over 20 workers were laboring in a narrow space, surrounded by piles of cloth and material. Tuoi Tre reporters spoke with two of the many child workers.

One is Pham Nhat Cuong, 14, from Quang Ngai. He said he had worked there for three months and knew nothing about his salary. He said he would be paid at the end of the year.

Another worker is Dang Thi Thuy Duong, 15, from Soc Trang Province, who also didn’t know about her salary.

How to stop child labor abuses?

The latest survey of the HCM City Labour Inspector shows that, of 173 inspected firms, 62 employed child workers, with 149 less than 16 years old.

The numbers of child workers is high in the districts of Tan Binh and Binh Tan. Children must work in poor conditions for 10-14 hours per day without labor contracts.

Except for one limited liability company, these businesses are not registered. An official from the Tan Phu District’s Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs Department admitted that there are thousands of such enterprises in HCM City.

The Tan Phu District’s Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs Department Chief Phan Anh Nhan observed that in the January-September 2009 period, the department discovered 23 violations of the Labor Code, including four cases of child labor. Nhan noted that child labor is a common problem of HCM City, not only in Tan Phu district.

He said there are many difficulties in dealing with this problem, including the lack of personnel and the change of workshops to private firms that use child labor.

Phan Thanh Minh, chief of the Children Protection Division of the HCM City Department of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs, talked about the case of Nguyen Van Den.

Minh said: The case of Den that Tuoi Tre reported last week is unacceptable. This is not a special case. We will combine with related departments to force the employer to pay a satisfactory salary to Den. Through this case, we realize that labor inspections needs to be tightened.

We have investigated and we know that many children work up to 14 hours per day, mainly at garment enterprises in Tan Binh and Binh Tan districts. Their employers are families and small-sized enterprises. We know that many wards don’t know about child labor violations in their areas.

Child labor in HCM City has not been strictly controlled. In HCM City more than 10 percent of the children are from other provinces. They are often recruited from their hometown and brought to HCM City to work. They tell neighbors that these children are their relatives.

Our inspections show that children often work in secluded places and they don’t have chance to meet people, so it is difficult for the local community to detect.

To solve this problem, we need the cooperation of the children protection agencies of wards and districts, as well as the assistance of residents and police.

From http://english.vietnamnet.vn