Workers in Binh Duong locked down in factories to counter COVID-19
After the Ho Chi Minh City area, Binh Duong province is the most affected by the virus. Workers are forced to sleep and eat in their workplace. Some of them have fled, while others have been prevented from returning home.
Ho Chi Minh City (AsiaNews) – Several Vietnamese workers have been forced to remain inside factories to contain the spread of COVID-19 in Binh Duong, the province most affected by the health crisis so far after the Ho Chi Minh area.
The province has 29 industrial parks with over 2,000 companies and more than 485,000 Vietnamese workers and almost 15,000 foreign employees.
About 17,000 of the country's 154,000 coronavirus cases have been reported in Binh Duong. Yesterday’s case count reached 7,447 across the country.
To counter the rising number of infections, the government on 25 July imposed a curfew from 6 pm to 6 am until further notice.
About 3,600 firms in Bình Duong have decided to follow the so-called “Three Principles Plan”, but some workers have recently tried to go home because of infections.
In one plant with about 600 employees in the city of Tan Binh, many workers rushed to its gates begging to be allowed out after at least 60 coronavirus cases were reported.
At the Limited Company A.I., in the Bau Bang industrial zone, a few hundred people fled.
Some companies have decided to suspend the Three Principles Plan, while others have reduced production, but continue to force workers to stay.
"We are addressing the health situation in a decisive way," said Nguyen Thi Thanh Huong, deputy director of the Human Resources Department at Ens Foam, speaking to local media.
“To meet production needs, we have provided reasonable accommodation for employees,” Ms Huong said. In order “to overcome difficulties, people are treating each other as members of one big family.”
In reality, many plants have been quarantined recently and stopped production due to a high rate of infection.
Two additional factories in the municipality of Tan Uyen have reported 270 cases, while in the city of Di An, a wood manufacturing plant has reported 248 cases.
According to some sources, employers locked employees in factories without doing enough testing beforehand; at the same time, the high number of cases has prevented them from testing everyone.
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