Thử nghiệm sản phẩm

Migrant workers struggling to survive in pandemic

CẦN THƠ — Seeing the last of some instant noodles and vegetables in the kitchen, laid-off worker Trịnh Thị Ngọc Loan in the southern city of Cần Thơ could not hold back her tears.

“I don’t dare think about tomorrow,” she said.

Loan, from the southern province of Vĩnh Long, started working for a plant in Trà Nóc Industrial Zone in Cần Thơ City a few years ago. She, like many other workers in the industrial zone, rented a simple room in Residential Group No  二, Trà Nóc Ward, Bình Thuỷ District.

Having been laid off for more than two months since Cần Thơ City implemented a social distancing order under Directive  一 六, Loan is staying in the city, waiting for the day she can return to work.

“If I return to my hometown, I have to spend  一 四 days in a concentrated quarantine area and another  一 四 days when I back to Cần Thơ,” she said, adding that she even did not know if she would have meals in the following days.

“If my company re-opens when I’m at the concentrated quarantine area, I will not have my job anymore.

“Staying in the city at this time causes many difficulties for migrant workers like me. Now, I’m here with no job, no salary and don’t know when I can go back to work.”

Another migrant worker from Vĩnh Long Province working in Trà Nóc Industrial Zone, Lê Thanh Tân, said that before social distancing he had worked for a seafood processing company for more than a month.

Without income for more than two months, Tân and his wife only survive thanks to donated food.

“We have little food left while no one knows how long the COVID- 一 九 pandemic will last. We have to use the food as economically as possible,” Tân said.

“A new school year is set to start, I now have no money to buy new books and notebooks for my children.

“Whenever my children phone me, they ask me when I will return home or when I will send them money to buy new books.

“I’m afraid of such questions. I try not to cry in front of them.” 

Phùng Phú Hơn, a migrant worker from Sóc Trăng Province, said that he was laid-off for more than two months without getting any support from his company.

He and his neighbours, most of whom are unemployed, were not instructed to apply for any support offered by the Government and local authorities.

“We all now want to go back to work mostly,” Hơn said.