~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~ The Vietnam News

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[Year 2000]

[Year 2001]

Vietnam mulls first labour exports to US HANOI - Communist Vietnam is considering its first labour exports to its former foe the United States following applications from two US firms, officials said Friday. Uni Enterprise International Inc of Philadelphia and the Miami Maritime Services Company have both approached a state-owned recruitment firm about importing several hundred Vietnamese workers, the official said. The Transport Investment Cooperation Import-Export Corporation (Tracimexco), a satellite company of the transport ministry, is keen to sign the contracts but is still awaiting guidance fom the government, its foreign relations director Le Quoc Khanh, told AFP. "Tracimexco is considering conditions and preparing the necessary procedures to work directly with the two partners. "However, we cannot confirm when we can sign with the partners because Vietnam has no specific regulations for exporting labour to this market yet." The two US firms want Vietnamese workers for positions as nurses, sales assistants, animal handlers and sailors, Khanh said. They are also prepared to take unlimited numbers of qualified Vietnamese to work in the IT industry. Recruitment should be no problem as the salaries on offer, rising to 40,000 dollars for a sailor, dwarf the average annual income here of 250 dollars a year. The communist authorities here have been seeking to boost the number of Vietnamese working abroad to help relieve the pressure for job creation posed by the 1.3 million post-war baby-boomers who join the labour market every year. The government is considering offering tax incentives to recruitment firms as part of its plans to raise overseas employment from some 30,000 last year 2000 to more than 50,000 in 2001. Vietnamese workers are already employed in one US jurisdiction, the Pacific island territory of American Samoa, although there the experience has been a far from happy one. A senior Vietnamese official has just returned from the islands after leading a mission of inquiry into racist clashes at a clothing factory there last November in which one Vietnamese woman lost an eye and nine other migrant workers were also injured. The clashes prompted the foreign ministry to express its "grave concern" over this "brutal and serious violation of human life and dignity." But a labour ministry official later told AFP that while Vietnam was determined to protect the legitimate interests of its workers, it did not want to let the issue interfere with its plans to boost its labour exports. Agence France Presse - January 12, 2001.

Vietnam earned $1.25 billion from labor exports in 2000 HANOI - Vietnam earned $1.25 billion by sending workers to other countries last year, making labor exports one of the Communist nation's key export categories, an official said Friday. A record 31,400 Vietnamese were sent aboard to work last year, 50% more than in 1999, said Truong Quang Oanh, director of the Center for Workers and Experts Export Information and Consultation. Vietnam has targeted a further increase to 50,000 workers and experts to be sent overseas this year, he said. The country's top labor markets include South Korea, Japan, Laos and Taiwan, with Taiwan becoming its newest labor destination, he said. About 8,000 workers were sent to Taiwan last year. Sixty-eight enterprises were licensed last year to send workers overseas, bringing the total number of companies involved in labor exports to 159, Oanh said. He attributed the surge in the number of Vietnamese working overseas to the expansion of foreign export markets, an improvement in the quality of Vietnamese labor, and a greater willingness of other governments to accept foreign workers. The number of Vietnamese working aboard remains small compared to other Asian countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia and Pakistan. Associated Press - January 12, 2001.