According to the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA), as of March 26, Vietnam had 560,000 people working in 36 countries and territories affected by Covid-19.

In Q1 2020, 4,929 overseas Vietnamese workers returned to Vietnam, mostly after their labor contracts finished, from Japan (2,978 workers), South Korea (1,255) and Taiwan (633).

Analysts said because of the epidemic, the demand for workers has decreased, so many overseas Vietnamese workers have decided to come back.

Lao Cai province received 500 Vietnamese workers returning from China from April 20 to April 22 alone. The provincial authorities predicted that the figure may rise to 2,900 in several more days, according to VnExpress.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate in the home labor market has increased. The number of unemployed workers was 1.1 million in Q1 alone, according to GSO.

Domestic unemployed workers, plus repatriated workers, will put pressure on agencies and local authorities.

According to the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA), as of March 26, Vietnam had 560,000 people working in 36 countries and territories affected by Covid-19.

Ngo Duy Hieu, a National Assembly Deputy, deputy chair of the Vietnam Labor Federation, said in his article on Thoi Bao Kinh Te Sai Gon that repatriated workers can be divided into untrained workers and skilled workers.

It will be difficult to deal with the first group of workers, except setting up mechanisms to encourage agricultural production and creating favorable conditions for them to run farms and small-scale economic models.

Meanwhile, the second group of repatriated workers, with deep knowledge, experience and foreign language skills, could be an important resource for Vietnam.

The biggest problem for these workers is lack of information.

According to GSO, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and China are the biggest foreign direct investors in Vietnam. These are also markets with the largest numbers of Vietnamese workers returning home.

Thousands of South Korean, Japanese, Taiwanese and Chinese projects and enterprises are operating in Vietnam, and they are complaining about the lack of high-quality workers.

Meanwhile, most foreign workers in Vietnam are managers, qualified workers and specialists, and many of them have returned to their home countries because of Covid-19.

Hieu believes that the high-quality repatriated workers could fill in the gap in high-quality labor force at foreign invested enterprises.

He said connecting enterprises and repatriated workers needs to be done immediately to fill the gap.

Local labor departments need to join forces with local authorities to make lists of repatriated workers and collect information about their areas of expertise, experience and foreign language skills. The departments also need to contact VCCI to learn about worker demand.

Kim Chi 

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