Cam Ba Khon, 27 years old, and his wife Lu Thi Phong, 23 years old, lost their jobs right after International Labor Day, May 1.
Cam Ba Khon and his wife in front of their motel room in Bac Ninh.
At 3:00 p.m. on May 5, workers were casting bulbs and sharpening lamps. Khon saw nearly a dozen people entering the thousand-square-meter factory, with security guards and bank representatives accompanying the police.
Hundreds of people left the factory and office in the heat of nearly 40 degrees Celsius. Most of the production staff were women, they put their heads on their colleagues’ shoulders and cried, many of them were pregnant.
Bac Ninh, where more than 1,100 companies are operating, attracts 300,000 workers working in 10 concentrated industrial parks.
By the end of June, the national report was even worse: 900,000 unemployed people were among the 30.8 million workers negatively affected by the pandemic, and there could be `more by the end of the year`.
Workers wait for the business owner to return
Cam Ba Khon shared that he hopes the business owner will return.
The highest unemployment rate falls in the group with low professional qualifications, like Khon and his wife.
Two years later, Phong, then 21 years old, sent his 20-month-old son, who had just been weaned, to his grandparents and followed her husband to the company.
Khon and Phong, like most Vietnamese workers, chose to work overtime.
Stepping out of the workshop in the middle of a May afternoon, Khon’s mind was spinning with the question `Where is the money to pay for boarding house this month?`.
The amount of money spent was 1.4 million VND for boarding house, 1 million VND to pay for kindergarten for my children, 3 million VND to send to my mother who is in the provincial hospital to treat ovarian cysts, and the rest to pay off bank debt.
Phong, when she was 18 years old, got married and joined the factory at 21 years old.
With no hope of the company reopening, in mid-June, Khon and his wife took a car back to their hometown to plant 8 acres of fields and clear grass on the acacia hill.
Khon and his wife just returned to Bac Ninh on July 7, at 1am.
At noon in July, Phong and his compatriots went to the market to buy a bunch of water spinach for 5,000 VND and a piece of sausage for 1.2 ounces, priced at 30,000 VND.
When Khon and his wife drove each other to the company twice a day to listen, 8 km away, six-month pregnant woman Nguyen Thi Hoa’s ears were irritated by the sound of the phone ringing.
Hoa lost her job when she was in the sixth month of her pregnancy.
In early 2017, six months after the company was founded, Hoa worked as an accountant, in charge of payroll, insurance and union activities.
`In April, I worked overtime on all four Sundays. I asked why so much, and the boss also said the other side needed goods urgently,` Hoa recalled, not recognizing the signs of instability of a company about to stop operating.
Hoa’s last month’s salary received on April 10 was about 10 million VND.
Hoa’s colleague, Mr. Tran Huu Quyen, 31 years old, has been managing product quality for many days and has followed his friends to repair electricity and install air conditioners to earn income to support his two young children and his 4-month pregnant wife.
Four days after the company’s assets were sealed by the bank, the financial director still sent an official letter promising `maybe by May 11 the Korean side will be stable and will pay April salary`.
The right to define the ideology `well, there’s no more hope, now we have to save the workers ourselves`.
Workers like Quyen and Khon and his wife have determined that they will lose their entire salary, and the biggest problem they are looking forward to is having their insurance policy resolved.
`The name Khon, why is life so miserable?` he concluded.