VietNamNet Bridge – About 90,000 tons of electronics waste has been discharged to the environment every year. The figure is believed to increase sharply in the future, as more and more global electronics groups plan to set up their production bases in Vietnam.

The big threat for high-technology enterprises’ workers

Ngo Thi Minh Huong, Director of the Development and Integration Center, said the center has suggested to Belgium Oxfam to carry out a survey on the impacts of the working conditions on Vietnamese workers in electronics enterprises.

It is estimated that Vietnam discharges 90,000 tons of electronics waste every year, the hazardous waste which can “extirpate” the environment – air, earth and water – and seriously threaten people’s health, causing serious diseases such as cancer, heart and mental diseases.

The center’s specialists, after surveying the working environment, working condition safety and interviewing workers at electronics assembling workshops, have found that the workers mostly work manually, but there are also the production lines that make and test products before they are launched into the market.

According to Huong, most of the workers, though working in hazardous environments, do not know that they need to use labor safety equipment, such as protective masks or gloves.

The workers at some special production lines, in principle, need to use special non-chemical protective masks. However, they were not given such the masks.

Huong pointed out that workers have not been protected well enough because the enterprises’ owners try to cut down expenses to reduce the production costs, while the labor safety clothes are relatively expensive.

Nevertheless, she stressed that Vietnamese workers have the right to request the equipment to protect themselves during the work. Though the equipment is really costly, and they make nothing if compared with the values of the high-technology products sold on the market.

China says “no” to hazardous industries, how about Vietnam?

The development and integration center has also pointed out that though having to work in the hazardous environment, Vietnamese workers only receive modest pay.

China was once the ideal destination for the global electronics manufacturers, who only had to pay $90 a month to every worker.

However, things are getting quite different. As the economy has got improved and living standards have been upgraded, Chinese have become more demanding.

According to Huong, China now tries to put hazardous waste outside its territory, doesn’t want hazardous industries, and wants higher salaries for workers.

“These are the reasons behind the global electronics groups’ leave for Vietnam,” Huong said. “The expected profits to be made in China have become less attractive.”

Vietnam has received a series of huge investment projects in the high technology sectors in recent years, from the Intel’s project in HCM City, worth billions of dollars, to Samsung’s two big projects in Bac Ninh and Thai Nguyen provinces, or Canon’s and Panasonic’s.

Samsung once built up its biggest smart phone factory in China to take full advantage of the low labor cost in the country. However, it later has decided to relocate its factories to Vietnam, because the Chinese high economic growth rate has led to the Chinese higher salaries.

The global electronics group, which saw the profits drop because of the increased salaries in China, have together with Nokia Oyj and Intel Corp-- decided to move to Vietnam, where the labor cost is just 1/3 of that in China.

Dat Viet