Unscrupulous recruiters exploit Vietnamese
HO CHI MINH CITY - Vietnam has been following its neighbors' example in pursuing labor exports, but is fast discovering that along with the remittance revenues such a policy brings come headaches: unscrupulous job supply firms, and deception and exploitation of workers.
Last month, six Vietnamese migrant workers returned from Malaysia after claiming to have been cheated by recruitment companies that lured them to work in the construction and manufacturing industry with the promise of high pay.
"I invested a lot in that job in Malaysia hoping it would help us put together some savings and change my family's life," lamented Hung, who returned home after three months working on a construction site in Malaysia. Hung declined to give his full name.
Attracted by promises that in just three months the workers it sends would be able to save significant amounts of money, the Vietnam Labor Overseas Deployment Cooperation (LOD), a company owned by the Ministry of Transport and Communication, signed up 300 workers to work in Malaysia this year. The workers may have felt assured that their rights would be protected in the knowledge that the LOD had signed a labor framework agreement with its Malaysian counterpart firm. But they soon learned different when their pay did not square with what had been promised earlier, because of huge deductions that ate into their earnings.
Currently, Vietnam has more than 12,600 workers in Malaysia. Half are employed in the manufacturing sector, with the remainder evenly divided in the electronics, textiles and garments, and the construction sectors, according to the Department for the Administration of Foreign-Employed Labor Force (DAFELF).
Some 7.5 million to 8 million Vietnamese of working age are in need of jobs in this country of 79 million people. The Asian Development Bank reported this year that the urban unemployment rate stood at more than 6 percent in 2001.
"Vietnam's unemployment rate has been a big headache for top state officials, so the more workers we can send abroad the more relief we will hopefully see," said DAFELF director Tran Van Hang.
Indeed, the number of Vietnamese laborers going overseas has climbed from 20,000 in 1999 to 25,000 in 2000 and 35,000 in 2001, according to statistics from the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA). By year-end, MoLISA hopes to have sent some 50,000 laborers to work in South Korea, Laos, Japan, the Middle East and Libya, with Malaysia emerging as a key host nation for Vietnam workers.
To date, 27 of Vietnam's 159 labor companies are licensed to export workers to Malaysia.
Unlike its Southeast Asian neighbors, Vietnam is a relative latecomer to the idea of organized migration for work. But the government plans to expand labor exports to 500,000 by 2005, which it says will earn the economy some US$2 billion in annual remittances.
But the increasing number of disputes this year and last between Vietnamese workers abroad and employment-supply companies shows that a labor-export policy is not without costs, prompting MoLISA to investigate exploitative practices in the sector.
At the heart of these disputes are weak or poorly enforced laws to protect workers, despite the existence of labor framework agreements between various Vietnamese labor companies to supply foreign companies with workers.
The LOD was one of the first hiring firms to begin exporting Vietnamese workers to Malaysia, but weak legal protections have meant that firms have been able to cheat workers.
Hung said he and his colleagues were led to believe that their monthly salary would be three or four times what it actually turned out to be, because of deductions from their pay. "The company made us believe that we could get $263 per month. The monthly pay in reality is around $80 only," he recalled.
MoLISA's regulations stipulate that overseas workers "are to pay no more than 12 percent of their monthly salaries as service fees to labor-supply companies if their employment package includes accommodation fees and labor and health-care insurance. The service fee is set at less than 8 percent if contracts exclude those benefits."
"Many labor companies have supplied vague information to job applicants so as to cheat them," said DAFELF director Tran Van Hang, adding that he would revoke the operating license of any firm found to be in breach of the law.
But inflating expected earnings is not the only charge against the LOD. Workers last month also accused it of taking advantage of workers' ignorance of state regulations that disallow recruitment firms from charging them "registration fees" for applying for jobs.
Workers who registered with the Nghe An Job Service, an LOD agent in the central province of Nghe An, reported that they had to pay VND50,000 ($3.25) to advance to the first interview stage and VND30,000 ($2) for the second.
As part of its job-recruitment drive, the LOD was only allowed to export 300 workers, but did not announce the figure publicly so as to attract as many applicants as possible and get as much registration fees as it could. As a result, more than 2,000 people registered, earning the labor firm hundreds of millions of illegally derived dong.
Meantime, the attraction of Malaysia as a workers' destination appears to have been undercut by the latest reports of false promises of high wages. Labor companies say thousands of jobs in Malaysia are waiting for Vietnamese workers, but the number of applicants remains subdued.
"Workers would rather look for a job in Japan or Taiwan, where they are more certain of 'investment returns'," Hung said.
By Tran Dinh Thanh Lam - Inter Press Service - December 14, 2002.
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