Labour Export Bill: Eliminating Weak Manpower Export Firms

The Labour Export Law, which will be submitted to the National Assembly in May 2006, will strongly affect labour export firms, Mr. Nguyen Luong Trao, Deputy Minister of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA), said at the introductory meeting of the draft Labour Export Law.

 

According to the figures from the Overseas Labour Management Department, Vietnam now has more than 400,000 labourers working in over 40 countries and territories around the world. Each year, they earn some US$1 billion. MoLISA highly appreciates the above results. However, according to Trao, the labour export works are not actually good as the quality of Vietnamese workers is still low and they mainly do simple jobs like housekeeping. Meanwhile, manpower-exporting companies do not pay much attention to market survey work and lack professionalism.

 

At present, Vietnam has nearly 150 licensed labour export enterprises. Only a few of them operate perfunctorily. To tighten the management in labour export field, Deputy Minister Trao said, when the Labour Export Law is ratified by the National Assembly and takes effect, only strong-enough and responsible enterprises are allowed to continue their operations.

Accordingly, only licensed enterprises satisfying five conditions are permitted to operate in labour export: (1) having chartered capital and a deposit of VND500 million (US$31,250), (2) having responsible apparatus, (3) managers must be university graduates, or higher, (4) having detailed business plans and (5) have not had a business licence revoked.

The bill also mentions responsibilities and rights of branches of labour export enterprises. Particularly, branches have no rights to sign labour supply contracts with foreign partners or to sign contracts with labourers for working overseas. Neither are branches entitled to collect service fees, brokerage fees and deposits from labourers. Or in other words, branches are only allowed to recruit and train labourers and they must make reports and will be inspected by the Department of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs.

 

Mr Nguyen Thanh Hoa, Director of the Overseas Labour Management Department under the MoLISA, said the new law will restrain firms from opening so many branches, helping State authorities monitor operations of concerned enterprises and protect the rights and interests of labourers more effectively. 

 

However, according to labour export firms, this regulation is improper because it is against the Civil Law, Enterprise Law and Commerce Law, which allow branches to carry out a part or entire functions of enterprises, even the authorised agent functions.

 

Another important content of the draft law is labour export enterprises are required to cooperate with local authorities to make public information about recruitment volume, criteria and contracts to labourers.

 

This ruling also received strong protests from labour export firms. According to them, under this law, if an enterprise wants to recruit workers at a commune, it must have the letter of introduction of the Overseas Labour Management Department to show the Provincial Labour Export Steering Board. Then, the board will send an introductory letter to district authorities and finally another document to the communal authorities will be sent. If the enterprise wants to recruit in another province, they must do the same processes again.

 

These administrative procedures are not only troublesome and costly but also create loopholes for bribery. In addition, these procedures also cause more difficulties for future overseas labourers to gain access to bank loans.