LookAtVietnam – Factories in the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta are still desperate to recruit workers more than a month after Tet (Lunar New Year) festival ended.

Employees work in My Tho Garment Company in the Mekong Delta’s Tien Giang Province where employers are struggling to fill vacancies because people are less interested in factory jobs.

Factories in Hoa Phu Industrial Park and Co Chien Industrial Park in Vinh Long are looking for 7,000 workers.

“There’s been a worker shortage since 2008,” Huynh Kim Hoang, manager of Vinh Long Job Placement Centre, said.

“Despite the center decreasing the schooling requirements from grade12 to grade 9, we still can’t recruit enough workers for 13 companies who have registered with our center,” Hoang said.

In Ca Mau Province, there are 1,000 vacancies that can’t be filled in seacooking processing companies.

Similarly, job placement centres in the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta can’t find workers for 5,000 jobs in hundreds of enterprises in ten industrial parks in Long An Province.

Nguyen Quoc Vung, director of the Thanh Nien Job Placement Centre in Can Tho City, said the labour supply was only 10 per cent of demand. Vung said his center had failed to find anyone for 3,000 positions at the Hoang Long Seafood Processing Ltd Co, even after running two employment drives.

Workers in the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta need a change in awareness and attitude, reported Sai Gon Giai Phong newspaper.

According to the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, 73.5 per cent of force nationwide are in rural areas. Some 21.49 per cent of them are in Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta, but only 6.7 per cent work for companies.

A working session between the Viet Nam General Confederation of Labour and the Labour Union in the south at the end of last year argued that the average monthly salary of workers in Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta ranged between VND1.3-1.5 million, not enough for the type of work they were required to do.

A seafood-processing worker said her salary of VND2.5 million after three years at the company was not satisfactory. She said her and her friends in the garment industry, who received even less, were keen to quit and find better paying jobs

Some employers said salary was not the reason for the labour shortfall in factories.

They said the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta is a key economic region with many advantages in agriculture, forestry and the marine economy, creating many ways to earn a living that are lighter than factory work, pay better and closer to home.

They said many Delta residents found it hard to adapt to factory work, while some companies skimped on workers by only providing casual positions without insurance.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News