Employees head home to families

Local governments and businesses are also giving food and supplies to disadvantaged families around the country to help guarantee a happy holiday.

A chartered train carrying about 400 workers of Samsung Vina Electronics Co Ltd left from the northern province of Bac Ninh on its way to the central province of Thanh Hoa on February 6, one of six trains that the company chartered to take 5,000 workers south to their hometowns in Thanh Hoa and Nghe An.

The other five trains left on February 7, with travellers receiving special gifts from the Vietnam Railway Administration. Trains will again pick up workers to return to work again on February 15 and 16.

Hanoi Passenger Railway Transportation Company Deputy Director Nguyen Van Binh said that his company’s co-operation with Samsung Vina is beneficial for all parties, ensuring that Samsung will have its full workforce in place after the Tet holiday is over.

“Enterprises in Vietnam often struggle to find workers in the weeks immediately following the holiday as workers choose to remain in their home provinces or find work elsewhere,” Binh noted.

The Samsung railway charter is so effective this year that similar arrangements are expected to be made by companies in industrial zones in Bien Hoa and Hai Duong provinces next year to transport workers to and from home during Tet, he said.

The Labour Union in the southern province of Binh Duong on January 29 also arranged free bus rides for 600 industrial park workers, many of whom hail from northern or central provinces.

Local businesses in the province also provided 15,000 free bus tickets for industrial park workers.

“On average, each bus ticket costs VND1-1.7 million (US$50-80) for these poor workers to return to their hometowns,” said the deputy head of the union, Bui Thanh Nhan

Gifts for the poor

To help ensure that disadvantaged households can enjoy the holiday, local authorities in the northern province of Vinh Phuc have also spent VND14 billion (US$672,000) on Tet gifts for around 2,800 families, war invalids, and heroic Vietnamese mothers in the province.

In the central city of Danang, about 1,000 banh chung (sticky rice cakes) have been distributed to poor children.

Nearly 5,000 Tet gifts for the underprivileged have also been distributed in the central province of Quang Ngai.

Also in Binh Duong, 500 people worked on February 7 to make 7,200 Tet cakes to give to underprivileged kids.

The cake is another traditional treat mostly popular in southern Vietnam, made from glutinous rice and meat, rolled in a banana leaf into a thick, cylindrical shape.

The HCM City chapter of the Vietnam Red Cross Society has also spent VND23.6 billion (US$1.13 million) on gifts and cash for the disadvantaged.

Poor families, orphans, and people with disabilities, as well as Agent Orange victims in HCM City and outlying areas have received a total of 60,500 gifts, according to chapter chairwoman Nguyen Thi Hue.

Earlier last month, the Red Cross chapter also gave 1,200 Tet gifts to Vietnamese families living in Cambodia.