VietNamNet Bridge – The number of workers at enterprises has reportedly not
increased over the last 5 years. New workers have been employed to offset the
left ones, not to serve the enterprises’ business expansion plans.
“Creating jobs” or “giving jobs”?
The latest survey conducted by the Tri Viet Human Resource Development Center at
200 enterprises with 60,000 workers in different business fields in HCM City has
shown a surprising thing: the number of employees at the enterprises has not
increased over the last 5 years.
In 2008, the enterprises reportedly had 60,000 workers, and the same figure had
been reported by the end of 2012.
The director of an enterprise in the Tan Tao Industrial Zone in HCM City said
the company has recruited new workers; however, the recruitment just aims to
offset the ones who have give up the jobs.
A report released five years ago showed that the industrial zones and export
processing zones in HCM City employed 250,000 workers. And the number has been
preserved over the last 5 years.
The above said director has attributed the immovability of the workforce to the
economic recession, which has caused to the slow sales of products and the
production stagnation. He said no one would be foolish enough to recruit more
workers at this moment, if he doesn’t intend to scale up the production.
It is estimated that it’ll take VND50 million on average to create a new job.
Most of the money would be spent on the initial investments, machines and
equipments, materials and advertisements to make the products to be generated by
the worker salable.
“Why do we have to recruit more workers, if we have to scale down production and
suffer from the big inventories?” questioned Truong Minh Hoa, Director of Tan
Company in HCM City.
Every year, the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA)
submits to the National Assembly the plans and the solutions to create 1.5-1.7
million jobs. In HCM City, the number is about 250,000 every year.
A question has been raised that where the new workers are working, if
enterprises have confirmed that they don’t create new jobs?
Ta Quang Hung, Director of an information technology firm in district 12 in HCM
City, has noted that people seem to have misunderstanding about the concept of
“creating jobs” and “giving jobs to workers.”
The former should be understood as the number of new jobs created thanks to the
establishment of new factories or companies, or the business expansion of the
existing enterprises.
Meanwhile, the latter means that someone gets a job at a factory or enterprise.
This could be the issue the MOLISA mentions. It’s more important to create new
jobs, because this shows the development of the national economy.
Where have dissolved businesses’ workers gone?
The government many years ago set up a goal of obtaining 500,000 businesses by
2010, including 98 percent of small and medium enterprises. The end had been
reached by 2010.
However, some changes have occurred since then. The Ministry of Planning and
Investment, in 2012, when checking the number of businesses, found out that
541,000 businesses were existing on paper, but 93,000 of them were unfound in
reality, while 16,000 enterprises, which registered their business, had not been
operational yet.
The report also showed that 24,000 businesses suspended their operation, 31,000
were following the procedures to get dissolved. In the first quarter of the
year, 13,000 more enterprises stopped operation.
NLD