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Returning migrants exert ‘pressure’ on rural areas
Migrants from rural to urban areas are feeling the pinch of the economic crisis the most as the unemployment situation worsens.
Not only are they getting less work in the city, but when they do get some jobs, the pay has been reduced. Since the families of most migrants depend on their incomes to subsist in rural areas, returning home is not much of a choice.
And because there are larger numbers of migrants unable to find regular work and help their families return home, there is a big pressure on rural areas, officials say.
Pham Thi Trang has just lost her job at a wood processing facility in Song Than Industrial Park in the southern province of Binh Duong, but colleagues still holding on to their jobs are not much better off, she says.
“They cut many jobs due to a fall in orders, but what the remaining staff receive is not much better, with only VND1 million (US$56) per month,” says Trang, who comes from the central province of Thua Thien-Hue.
Trang says many of her friends, whose incomes have dropped sharply as they no longer work overtime, have decided to return to their home communities.
The economic slowdown has taken its toll on both skilled and unskilled workers across the country.
At the Buoi Market, a “mobile labor market” in Hanoi where migrant workers hope to find work as masons, porters or any other menial task that needs to be done, Le Van Thang and five other members in his group are still waiting for jobs around noon as nobody has called on them since the morning.
“I get only 10 days of work a month,” Thang says. “Lucky migrants get 20 days, but this is rare.
“On average, around 5-6 people come [to the market] per day, and each employs only one or two migrants,” said the man from the north-central province of Nghe An.
“Waiting for work is like fishing. It depends on luck,” he said wryly.
A “rapid” survey of the social impact of the global economic crisis in Vietnam, carried out in February by the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences in collaboration with Oxfam GB and the World Bank confirmed that migrant workers are having more trouble finding employment in urban areas.
The survey showed migrants had 20 days work a month during 2007, but only 10 days per month in late 2008, of which the days working for civil construction projects reduced by about 70 percent; and the days worked at other jobs such as loading and unloading goods and cleaning reduced by about 30 percent.
Workers at craft villages, including unskilled migrants, across the country are also hit by the economic slowdown.
Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, Minister of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, said last week more than 30,500 workers at craft villages, almost half of whom were women, lost their jobs in the first quarter this year.
Vu Quoc Tuan, chairman of the Vietnam Craft Village Association, said thousands of workers had lost their jobs at the Da Hoi steel village in the northern province of Bac Ninh as of March.
“Currently, around 410,000 laborers work at craft villages in Hanoi and 210,000 of them are unskilled migrants,” Tuan said, “When craft villages cut production, the migrants are always the first to lose jobs.”
Since March, nine craft villages, comprising 2,166 household businesses, have gone bankrupt while 124 others are surviving, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
Tuan said migrant workers returning to their communities would “put big pressure” on rural areas.
With rural-urban migration spurred mainly by considerably reduced agricultural options, returning workers are unlikely to find income generating opportunities to help their households, further straining limited resources.
However, Minister Ngan said many businesses are looking for employees and more than 80 percent of workers in Ho Chi Minh City, Binh Duong and Dong Nai who lost their jobs have found new ones.
She said 70 percent of the population are working in the agriculture sector and temporary unemployed people can return to work on their farmland before moving on to find other jobs.
The government has set a target of creating 1.7 million new jobs this year. But in a report released at the ongoing National Assembly session last week, it did not say how the current unemployment and underemployment problem would affect that target.
Unemployment in Vietnam has become “complicated” as local businesses continue to be affected by the global downturn and have to eliminate jobs, the government said in the report.
More than 64,000 workers lost their jobs in the first quarter this year, mainly at businesses and industrial parks in large cities and towns like Hanoi, HCMC, Binh Duong, Dong Nai and Hai Phong, the government said. The unemployment figure was compiled using data from 48 cities and provinces.
The government estimates around 300,000 people nationwide will lose their jobs by the end of this year. The figure last year was 66,707, based on data from 41 localities, local online newspaper VietNamNet reported.
Many of the job cuts this year have been in the export sector, including industries like garment and textile, footwear and seafood, as businesses have to reduce costs to deal with a decline in export orders.
thanhnien, agencies
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