Runaway migrant workers to be fined
Any Vietnamese migrant worker will be imprisoned up to two years and face a VND50 million ($3,205) fine if they are found to have deliberately deserted their contracted jobs when overseas.
Nguyen Thi Hoai Thu, head of the National Assembly’s Committee for Social Affairs, said that the tougher punishments in the draft decree to regulate Vietnamese migrant workers were designed to stop the rise in runaway workers.
“The growing number of runaway workers has forced labour recipient countries to put restrictions on Vietnamese workers, which hits local labour suppliers hard.
“In this context, the draft decree is strong enough to punish a guilty worker, but will help millions of innocent people,” she said.
In accordance to the draft decree, the director of the Department for Administration of Foreign Employed Labour Force and Vietnamese ambassadors in the labour recipient countries will be given authority to issue a document forcing contract breakers to return home immediately.
Figures from the Ministry of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA) estimates that there are 400,000 Vietnamese working abroad, mostly in Taiwan, Malaysia, South Korea and Japan.
The figures also show that the ratio of Vietnamese runaway workers is always higher than that of Chinese and Filipino workers. On average, the ratio of runaway workers in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan is 30-40 per cent, 25-30 per cent and 9 per cent respectively of the total number of Vietnamese migrant workers taking up positions.
In comparison only 1.02 per cent of Chinese workers, 1 per cent of Filipino and less than 1 per cent of Thai workers break their contracts in Japan.
Thu admitted that existing regulations were not harsh enough and only consisted of a warning to absconding workers, which has not been enough to stop contract breakers when overseas.
However, deputy minister of foreign affairs Vu Dung, who was the Vietnamese ambassador in Japan for several years, said that it was necessary to ask why migrant workers deliberately deserted their jobs and took up illegal residence in foreign countries.
According to Dung, the major reasons why workers leave positions are that workers want to obtain better salaries outside their contracted jobs or escape high fees, which they are required to pay local labour suppliers for overseas jobs.
“The picture will be brighter once fee requirements of local labour suppliers are considerably reduced, “ he said.
According to Dafel, Vietnam exported 31,000 workers to the international labour market between January and June - fulfilling 43 per cent of the annual target to send 70,000 migrant workers abroad.
Vietnam Economic Times - August 09, 2005.
|