However, due to the complicated development of the COVID-19 pandemic this year, the trade unions should pay strong attention to protecting their members and workers in the spirit of preventing the epidemic effectively while ensuring production and business activities.
Enterprises with large numbers of workers, especially export processing and industrial zones, can easily form large epidemic outbreaks and are at high risk of cross-contamination. Even if just one worker is infected with COVID-19, the whole production line and even the whole enterprise must postpone production. Therefore, if COVID-19 epidemic appears in industrial zones, the businesses’ activities and production as well as the lives and jobs of employees will be affected.
According to labour experts, many businesses have coordinated with trade unions to strictly the Prime Minister’s Directive No.16 and the Ministry of Health (MoH)’s recommendations. However, the facilities and infrastructures in several enterprises the standards of distancing in the workshops and cafeterias. Therefore, business owners should proactively work with grassroots trade unions to boost propaganda to raise the employees’ awareness of COVID-19 prevention and control as well as implementing anti-epidemic prevention and control at enterprises. The businesses should pay great attention to increasing the quality of shift meals to improve the workers’ resistance. The shift kitchen and dining rooms should be rearranged, ensuring safe distance. It is crucial to install more hand washing sinks in addition to antiseptic water around the factories for employees to wash their hands frequently. The enterprises should also equip thermometers to solve the situation of measuring body temperature with a hand-held device. It is also essential to reduce the number of people on buses to ensure the right distancing under the requirements of the MoH.
According to the quick report of the labour federations in the provinces and cities without epidemic, over 90% workers and employees in the enterprises returned to work. In order to prevent and control COVID-19, the management board of industrial zones and trade unions should supervise and inspect the disinfection of all factories and offices before the employees return as well as coordinate with employers to strictly comply with medical declaration for all employees and review and screen workers returning from epidemic-hit areas. The enterprises need to prepare enough antiseptic hand sanitiser in offices and factories, measure body temperatures of all workers and ask 100% workers to wear face masks, not gather and install Bluezone.
In addition, the trade unions should propose leaders of enterprises in industrial zones to use the available means of transport to take workers to limit the use of personal vehicles. It is crucial to adjust the working hours of the production lines towards the distancing to reduce the density of crowded people at the same time. In the provinces with many industrial parks, the trade unions should proactively form teams to guide the compulsory medical declaration for all workers from other localities, especially those with COVID-19 infections.
The enterprises should regularly work with the steering committee for epidemic prevention and control in the areas near industrial parks to supervise and inspect the inn owners to remind tenants to implement the 5K message: khau trang (facemask), khu khuan (disinfection), khoang cach (distance), khong tu tap (no gathering) and khai bao y te (health declaration). The trade unions at grassroots levels must uphold vigilance and continue to thoroughly grasp the motto of “fighting the pandemic is like fighting an enemy” while strictly implementing the strategy of taking epidemic prevention as a priority to lock down the risk of disease transmission from the outside, completely zone off the epidemic on the inside and effectively treat cases. The trade unions should also closely follow the situation of labour forces and actively coordinate with local authorities and branches to stamp out the epidemic in the shortest time.
The COVID-19 epidemic continues to develop complicatedly with a high risk of outbreak. The active propagandise in the epidemic prevention and control from the trade unions is very practical and significant. These activities should continue to be enhance and expanded, creating a firm wall to prevent the infiltration and infection of epidemics into enterprises, thus contributing to ensuring the health, life and jobs of employees while stabilising the production and business of enterprises following Tet.
