A rental room for workers near the Thăng Long Industrial Zone in Hà Nội. — Photo tienphong.vn

HÀ NỘI — After finishing for the day, Nguyễn Thị Biên, a worker in the Thăng Long Industrial Zone in Hà Nội, rushes to her boarding room as her husband and children have come to visit.

Biên, 30, is from the northern province of Hòa Bình.

She rents a small room to live and work in Hà Nội. The room is only about 10sq.m, so her bed takes up most of the space.

She pays nearly VNĐ2 million (US$85) a month for room, water and electricity, about a third of her salary.

Biên is one of the thousands of workers who rent accommodation around the Thăng Long Industrial Zone.

She has been living like this for nine years.

“When I first started working, my salary was low. Now my income is better, but the room renting fees also increased a lot,” she said.

As the rest of her salary is spent on meals, she cannot save any money.

Her husband is unemployed and their son will start grade 1 this year.

Unlike Biên, Nguyễn Thị Hà, 40, from Sơn La Province, is provided accommodation by her company in the Quang Minh Industrial Zone.

Every day, Hà and her colleagues are taken by car to the industrial zone to work.

Hà has been working there for ten years.

Four people share one apartment room with no rental fees. They only have to pay for meals.

However, reporters from the Tiền Phong (Vanguard) newspaper found that many rooms in the building are uninhabited.

Hà said that workers living with husbands and children often choose to rent a room outside to have flexible time for their daily activities.

In the apartment building, they have to follow the prescribed times.

A research done by the reporters shows that around the Thăng Long Industrial Zone, there are many rooms for rent for workers.

Renting fees are from a few hundred thousand đồng (VNĐ100,000 equals $4) to several million đồng per month, depending on the quality of the room.

Many rooms are damp, small, and have poor hygiene conditions, but many workers still chose them to save money.

Many workers lament the insecurity and theft problems in their rented accommodations.

Biên said: "If the State had a policy to build mini-apartments to support workers like me to rent at reasonable prices, our life would be improved a lot.”

At a conference held by the Hà Nội Party Committee, Lê Nguyễn Ngọc Thủy, a worker of the Toto Vietnam Co Ltd, proposed on behalf of the women workers that the city builds houses for low-income people.

She argued this would provide more kindergartens and schools, creating better conditions for workers' children to study at low cost.

Secretary of the Hà Nội Party Committee Đinh Tiến Dũng said that the city would soon call for investment in the construction of large-scale social houses.

A project is being planned on an area of around 100 hectares in Đông Anh District.

Hà Nội is determined to use the municipal budget to invest in schools and hospitals in these apartment buildings to both reduce costs and ensure living and learning conditions for workers and their children.

The Việt Nam General Confederation of Labour last year suggested the Government attract investors to develop social houses, especially for workers in industrial zones and allocate a part of the State budget to a programme for improving accommodation for workers.

In July last year, the Hà Nội People's Council approved a resolution on the housing development programme for the 2021-30 period, stating that worker housing was an essential infrastructure of the industrial park.

Ensuring stable accommodation for workers is the responsibility of employers, management boards of industrial zones, export processing zones, local authorities and trade unions, it said. — VNS