Around 150,000 workers who left HCM City amid the COVID-19 pandemic have come back to work, but city businesses still need many more to return to normalcy. Photo vtc.vn

HCM CITY — Cửu Long (Mekong) Delta provinces, HCM City and Bình Dương Province will organise a job fair for workers who returned to their hometowns to escape the COVID-19 outbreak.

It will be held at permanent employment recruitment services in provinces and cities and online via Zoom from 8am to 12am on Friday.

Võ Thanh Quang, director of the Sóc Trăng Province Department of Labour, Invalids, and Social Affairs, said nearly 50,000 people have returned after losing their jobs during lockdowns in Bình Dương and Đồng Nai provinces and HCM City, but the demand from enterprises in the province is only for around 3,000 workers.

According to the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs’ Department of Employment, only 60-70 per cent of returnees will go back to work in the southern provinces and cities, which will create a big gap between labour supply and demand.

Provinces and major cities with industrial and export processing zones would face a risk of labour shortage when they bring the epidemic under control while some rural areas would have surplus labour, it warned.

Experts said much would depend on connections between businesses and their former workers.

Chairman of the HCM City People's Committee, Phan Văn Mãi, said favourable conditions would be created for workers to return.

The city has also worked with business associations to recruit people in other localities.

Director of the city Department of Labour, Invalid and Social Affairs, Lê Minh Tấn, said as of October 18 around 150,000 returnees had come back to the city, taking the total number available to employers to 210,000, mostly in the sectors of trading and services, tourism, transport and leather and footwear.

However, they still need around 60,000 workers until the end of this year, and 120,000 more at the beginning of 2022 and after the Lunar New Year in early February.

The city is setting up employment exchanges.

Many businesses have contacted their former workers to persuade them to return to work. VNS