From
WIRE REPORTS
Around
700 Vietnamese workers have returned to Libya with a promised minimum wage
increase of 30 percent after fleeing the country due to the political upheavals
in 2011, business representatives said.
Nguyen
Van Xuan, chairman of a private investment consultant company based in the
Mekong Delta, said the company has sent 29 employees to a construction project
near Libya’s capital city of Tripoli, according to media reports.
The
workers have signed contracts that promise monthly wages of between $270 and
$350, but they can earn more than $5,000 a month by working an average of two
extra hours a day. Their employer provides meals and accommodations, he said.
Xuan
said the security within Libya is not as good as it was before the upheavals,
but all business ventures, most of them construction projects, have resumed or
started operating normally.
They
are seeking for foreign employees with higher payment than before, he said.
The
Ha Noi-based International Manpower Supply & Trade Company Ltd. (SONA) and
Viet Nam Construction and Import-Export JSC, which were among six businesses
that had sent Vietnamese workers to Libya, also have started sending them back.
SONA,
which joined the Libyan labor market as early as in 1994, has sent nearly 300
workers back since late last year.
Representatives
from the companies said they have checked the situation in Libya and the new
contracts have been thoroughly checked by Viet Nam’s related authorities.
Vietnamese
businesses once provided labor for 14 Turkish businesses that invested in many
Libyan construction projects, according to a statement on the government
website. But more than 100,000 were brought back home during the violent
political crisis.
Most
of those Turkish businesses said they are eager to welcome back their old
Vietnamese employees and promised to pay them wages that they still owed since
the upheavals.
“Our
Turkish partner in Libya said they are working on necessary procedures with
Libya’s government to reclaim their assets and demand compensation for damage
during the chaos. Once they succeed, they will fulfill payments to Vietnamese
workers and receive them back,” Xuan said.
He
said the partner has requested 100 Vietnamese workers but Xuan said he will
only send them once the company pays the previously unpaid wages.
Viet
Nam’s labor ministry reported many local companies have asked for permits to
send laborers to Libya after receiving big orders from foreign partners. But
for the meantime, the ministry has only allowed those that have worked within
the Libya labor market before to return to the country.
A
survey by Vietnamese businesses showed that nearly 50 percent of the workers
who were brought home during the upheavals wanted to return, given the stagnant
state of the local labor market.
According
to figures submitted by the Ministry of Investment and Planning at a government
meeting in late December, 51,800 local businesses have been affected by the
2012 economic crisis. They either declared bankruptcy or had to shut down or
scale back operations.
A
total of 68,000 new businesses were established in the first 10 months of 2012,
down 10 percent.
Le
Van Thanh, deputy head of the labor ministry’s Department of Overseas Labor,
said the ministry favors sending laborers to Libya, but businesses need to
confirm both employment opportunities and security.
He
said contracts have to hold the foreign employers in Libya responsible for the
workers’ safety. They have to buy insurance for the workers, keep them in safe
places during natural or political disasters, and send them home when necessary
together with full payments and compensation for any contracts being terminated
before being fulfilled.
