Nghe An Provincial Party Secretary Thai Thanh Quy meets with voters who are workers and laborers

Attending the conference were comrade Phan Van Anh - Vice President of the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor. Also meeting with voters were National Assembly deputies: Vo Thi Minh Sinh - Member of the Provincial Party Standing Committee, Chairwoman of the Vietnam Fatherland Front Committee of Nghe An province; Thai Thi An Chung - Member of the Provincial Party Executive Committee, Deputy Head of the Provincial National Assembly Delegation; Tran Nhat Minh - Full-time National Assembly Delegation of Nghe An.

Also attending were comrades: Phan Duc Dong - Member of the Provincial Party Standing Committee, Secretary of Vinh City Party Committee; Kha Van Tam - Member of the Provincial Party Executive Committee, Chairman of Nghe An Labor Federation and leaders of a number of departments, branches and localities.

Grasp more thoughts and aspirations of workers and laborers

The conference was organized in coordination with the National Assembly Delegation of Nghe An province, the Vietnam Fatherland Front Committee of Nghe An province and the Provincial Labor Federation. The conference was attended by 200 voters who are workers representing nearly 100,000 union members who are workers and laborers in the whole province.

In his opening speech, Chairman of the Nghe An Labor Federation Kha Van Tam emphasized that the conference continued to affirm the deep concern of the Party Committee, the government, the People's Council, and the National Assembly for workers and laborers. On the other hand, this conference contributed to strengthening democracy at the grassroots level, raising awareness and responsibility of workers and laborers in participating in Party and State building.

Today's voter contact conference is also an opportunity for National Assembly deputies to grasp more of the thoughts and aspirations of workers and laborers, to have a basis for synthesizing and reflecting to the National Assembly, relevant agencies and organizations to research, develop, amend, supplement and perfect policies and laws for laborers to ensure feasibility and practicality, in order to care for and protect the legitimate and legal rights and interests of union members, workers and laborers, build harmonious, stable and progressive labor relations in enterprises, contribute to promoting socio-economic development and effectively implementing social security activities.

Nghe An Provincial Party Secretary Thai Thanh Quy and National Assembly deputies listened to many opinions on life, labor, and employment; and made wishes and recommendations to the province and the Central Government.

The issue that many workers are concerned about and recommend is having policies to support housing. Voter Vuong Dinh Tuan, a worker at Luxshare -ICT Company, VSIP Industrial Park, said that currently many workers have to rent a house, their children have to be sent back to their hometowns, so they want to have a house to stabilize their life and work. Thereby, voters suggested reducing the loan interest rate to lower than the current 6.5% for the Government's 120 trillion VND social housing credit package to have access, because workers mainly use borrowed money to buy houses.

Sharing the same opinion, some other voters said that information on social housing projects and procedures for buying and renting is very limited for workers; thereby, they proposed solutions to help workers promptly access information on social housing, and at the same time requested to be informed when VSIP and WHA Industrial Parks will have social housing.

Faced with the fact that the regional minimum wage in Nghe An is still low, and the cost of living is relatively high, causing many difficulties for workers, workers also requested the Provincial National Assembly Delegation to propose increasing the regional minimum wage. In particular, voter Bui Thi Hien, a worker at Song Ca Van An Company in Nam Dan, proposed to raise the regional minimum wage in Nam Dan district from region 3 to region 2.

Voter Tran Van Phong, a former worker at Chau Tien Company Ltd., whose family currently lives in Nghi Thuan commune, Nghi Loc district, said he worked at the company for 2 years and suffered from silicosis, but has not yet received occupational disease benefits.

In addition, voters proposed many contents to ensure social infrastructure around industrial parks, such as planning, building markets and supermarkets to create conditions for workers, because when they work overtime and come home late, it is difficult to buy food; investing in building nurseries and kindergartens for workers' children in industrial parks to help female workers feel secure in working stably and long-term, because kindergartens are only held during office hours, while workers go to work early and come home late, or work in shifts, so the situation of female workers in enterprises having to quit their jobs after maternity leave is quite common, due to difficulties in taking care of young children.

Voters also recommended having a Community Health Center to serve workers in industrial parks to provide general health care and consultation, and reproductive health care, because workers work in shifts and it is very difficult to take time off to go to the doctor.

In addition, the workers' opinions also suggested that the National Assembly amend the law to allow workers to pay and receive unemployment benefits for unemployment insurance payment periods of 144 months or more; increase unemployment benefits from 60% to 75% (equal to the maximum pension level) to create conditions to support workers to have a minimum living standard when they lose their jobs or become unemployed; have policies to support workers when businesses owe or evade insurance payments; have policies to attract workers to work in industrial parks.

Voters' opinions have been specifically answered by leaders of departments and branches.

More conferences will be held to listen more to workers' thoughts and aspirations.

Listening carefully to the recommendations, the Provincial Party Secretary directly responded specifically to the thoughts, wishes and aspirations of the workers. In particular, regarding the incident at Chau Tien Company Ltd., where pollution in production caused many workers to suffer from silicosis, the Provincial Party Secretary requested relevant departments and branches to promptly advise the Provincial People's Committee to immediately chair a meeting to resolve related issues for the workers, not only the 22 workers at the time of the incident, but also the former workers must be considered; in which it is necessary to urge the company to resolve the policy issue for the workers.

Regarding the issue of social housing and workers' housing, along with cultural and sports facilities, schools, especially kindergartens, supermarkets and markets, the Provincial Party Secretary affirmed that the province is very concerned about this, especially in the context of increasing investment attraction efficiency. In 2022 and 2023, FDI attraction will be in the top 10 of the country, and since the beginning of 2024, it has attracted more than 1 billion USD of FDI capital.

The results of investment attraction reflect the situation of a large number of workers working in the Southeast Economic Zone and the province's industrial parks, so a synchronous mechanism is needed. Affirming that the province has "understood" this issue, the Provincial Party Secretary affirmed that the province will focus more on and direct the attraction of investment in social housing projects; at the same time, receive feedback from workers to the Government about the high interest rate of the 120,000 billion VND loan package for social housing.

Regarding labor supply, the Provincial Party Secretary said that this matter has been put on the agenda of the Provincial Party Standing Committee, so in the future, great attention will be paid to promoting solutions to ensure labor supply for investors; along with that, the province will coordinate with investors so that they have policies to care for and look after workers.

Receiving the opinions of voters who are workers, the Provincial Party Secretary said that he will propose that the Provincial People's Committee consider increasing the number of annual rewards for workers, because currently only 40 rewards are still small, but should be expanded to 100 - 150 rewards, in order to reward workers who have made outstanding achievements in emulation movements.

On this occasion, Provincial Party Secretary Thai Thanh Quy respectfully thanked the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor for its regular attention and assistance to Nghe An province in general and the workers' and laborers' movement in particular; hoping to receive more attention in the coming time.

Through this meeting with voters, Provincial Party Secretary Thai Thanh Quy thanked the workers and laborers who participated and gave many opinions; through which the province will continue to organize similar conferences to listen more to the multi-dimensional and comprehensive thoughts and aspirations; understand more about work and life; and grasp more of the thoughts and aspirations of voters who are workers.