Damaged companies in Vietnam riots get back to work

Damaged companies in Vietnam riots get back to work

While tension remains over an illegal Chinese-run drilling rig in Vietnam’s offshore waters, local workers and their foreign business owners ashore are joining hands to put their companies back into operation a week after riots erupted in some localities in the Southeast Asian country.

Dozens of factories and manufacturing plants at industrial parks and export processing zones in Binh Duong, Dong Nai, and Ha Tinh Provinces and Ho Chi Minh City were sabotaged and burned during riots last week.

Police in Vietnam have detained over 1,000 people on suspicion of inciting the riots.

Back to work

As many as 3,900 of 4,300 workers at the Kaiser Furniture Co, a Taiwanese-owned wood processor located in the Binh Duong-based My Phuoc 1 Industrial Park, returned to work on Monday along with their Taiwanese managers, according to the company.

In Ho Chi Minh City, the Chinese superiors of the He Chang Webbing Co, based in the Vinh Loc Industrial Park, also returned to the company’s manufacturing plant the same day.

All of the company’s Vietnamese employees showed up in the early morning to re-erect the fallen gates and clean up the damaged facility.

“The unexpected riots were incited by a small group of people for sabotage purposes,” director Tian Hai Long told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper in Vietnamese. “We came to Vietnam to do business and we only hope to enjoy stable security.”

Yu Ren Min, another Chinese national who is the general director of Riken Vietnam, a joint venture between China, Japan and Vietnam, chose to write a letter to his employees to encourage them to go back to work, according to a company representative.

The four Taiwanese executives of Kim Hong Co, a Taiwanese-owned apparel company at Linh Trung Export Processing Zone, have returned to their homeland following the riots.

However, “They will fly back to work in the next few days,” the company’s director of human resources asserted.

Security tightened

Authorities of the provinces where the riots occurred said they have beefed up security at the industrial parks to protect foreign investors.

They also sent forces to guard certain facilities after the owners left Vietnam following the incidents.

Vietnam Singapore Industrial Park, the operator of the VSIP 1 and VSIP 2 industrial parks in Binh Duong, said 269 businesses at the two venues have resumed operations, accounting for 83 percent of the total.

In other industrial parks in the southern province, more than 80 percent of foreign businesses have also gone back to work, according to Tran Van Lieu, head of the Binh Duong Industrial Park Management Board. The facilities that remain closed are those that have been burned.

Meanwhile, in Dong Nai, more than 150,000 workers from nearly 200 businesses that were temporarily shut down went to work on Monday, said Huynh Tan Kiet, chairman of the provincial Labor Union.

“Seventeen businesses where plants were damaged remain closed, leaving more than 3,000 workers unemployed,” he added.

The riots also cost more than 25,000 workers in Binh Duong their jobs, according to the province’s labor department.

“The incident has left huge damage but we will be with the investors and laborers,” deputy chairman of the province’s People’s Committee told Tuoi Tre.

“We will exert 500 percent of our efforts to win back confidence from investors.”

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