VietNamNet Bridge – The HCM City Social Insurance Agency will pay VND460 billion (US$21.9 million) in unemployment benefits to more than 100,000 laid-off workers this year, its deputy director has said.

Workers pack eggs at Ba Huan Ltd Co in HCM City. Many factories routinely fail to find enough workers. (Photo: VNS)

A severe shortage of manual workers had led to a high staff turnover rate at businesses, especially labour-intensive ones, involving large payouts.

But he admitted the system was being subverted by rogue practices.

Workers became eligible to get unemployment benefits after they paid premiums for at least 12 months. In some cases, enterprises pretended to terminate employment contracts to help workers claim unemployment benefits before signing new contracts with them, he said.

Many workers continued to receive the money even after finding other jobs because of a shortage of human resources at the agency, he added.

Nguyen Cao Thang, deputy director the HCM City Employment Service Centre, said around 50,000 laid-off workers claimed the benefits every month, with manual workers accounting for 90 per cent.

With the allowance amounting to 60 per cent of the last six months' average salary, he said manual workers normally got less than VND2 million a month, which was not enough to live on.

So they quickly found other jobs but continued to claim the allowance, he said, adding more than 60 per cent fell in this category.

The large number of people claiming unemployment insurance is thus not really a reflection of the city's job situation.

Factories in industrial parks and export processing zones routinely fail to find enough workers.

Nguyen Thanh Tung, director of the Employment Service Centre at the HCM City Export Processing and Industrial Zones Authority, said in fact they could only find 20 per cent of the workers they needed.

The unemployment insurance scheme has nearly 1.5 million members in the city.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News