However, very few enterprises directly rented boarding houses to provide accommodations for workers, so some owners have offered their boarding rooms to workers of many different enterprises, posing a risk of failing to ensure safety against Covid-19.

Workers of many enterprises live in a boarding house

Leaders of Van Coc 4 village, Van Trung commune (Viet Yen) instruct boarding house owners to implement epidemic prevention and control measures.

Than Van Thuan, Vice Chairman of the Viet Yen district People's Committee, said that the goal of building safe boarding houses is to arrange for workers of an enterprise to stay at the same place, separate from those of other businesses so that when any Covid-19 case is detected, it will be convenient for zoning off affected areas and stamping out the epidemic.

By mid-July 2021, the review was completed. The whole district has nearly 3,600 households providing boarding houses, equivalent to 58,283 safe rooms.

So far, companies including Hosiden, Rongxin, Sam Wang, Foxconn have signed contracts to rent 1,567 rooms for 3,134 workers. However, in fact, very few workers have come to stay in such accommodations.

In Van Coc 4 village, Van Trung commune, according to the plan, the village arranges two alleys with about 260 rooms for 520 workers of Newing Company, but currently there are only 60 workers of the company living here.

Duong Ngo Thu's family has 30 boarding rooms. According to the agreement, on July 27, the company took workers to stay in the rooms, but no one came by the date, so he let workers of other enterprises who had ever stayed here to rent.

The family of Nguyen Thi Hien in the same village also offers 20 rooms for workers of other enterprises besides Newing Company to stay. According to Hien, each room costs 900,000 VND to 1 million VND per month so it is a waste if the rooms are left empty. Therefore, the house owners expect to fill up the rooms to have money to cover their living expenses and pay bank interests.

Persistently persuading workers, businesses

The "safe boarding house" model not only plays a role in pandemic prevention and control, but also has great significance in ensuring security and order inside and outside the IPs as workers are well managed. Therefore, to overcome the above difficulties, Viet Yen district has determined that the priority solution is to persistently persuade workers and businesses.

Boarding workers in Van Coc 4 village, Van Trung commune (Viet Yen).

For enterprises resuming production and reaching pre-epidemic capacity, it is necessary to clear temporary "dormitories" at the enterprises and move workers outside to safe boarding houses and arrange them to live in the same area.

At present, most enterprises in the industrial parks have resumed operation. Although the epidemic situation in the province has been controlled, it can break out again at any time. Therefore, the arrangement of safe housing areas is a long-term solution to ensure safe production amid the pandemic.

A boarding house in Van Coc 4 village sees many workers of different enterprises staying together

To ensure the safe operation of accommodation facilities, with no new cases emerging, Viet Yen district will continue to support businesses to negotiate, sign contracts or help their employees to sign renting contracts with accommodation establishments on the principle that an accommodation establishment only serves employees of one enterprise. 

In addition, it will strengthen inspection and supervision of the operation of accommodation establishments. Along with the above solutions, businesses need to join hands to arrange for workers to stay in safe boarding houses for long-term benefits.

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