Around 3 million workers will have demand for housing by 2020, according to reports by 46 out of 63 provinces and cities.

As of late 2017, about 1.2 million workers needed accommodations, the reports said.

The Ministry of Construction revealed that its social housing programme for workers in industrial zones has finished 100 projects with 41,000 apartments, meeting the demand of 330,000 workers or 28 percent of the total.

The remaining 72 projects of the programme will be completed in the time ahead, offering 88,000 apartments for workers.

To speed up housing development for workers in industrial zones, the Government issued Directive No.03 on stepping up the development of social housing and Decision No.655 on the approval of a project to build trade union institutions in industrial and export processing zones which contains housing development.

By the end of 2017, Vietnam had 328 industrial zones, with 223 of them becoming operational. Currently, more than 2.7 million people are working in industrial zones, and millions of others in factories in small- and medium-sized industrial clusters.-VNA