HẢI PHÒNG — City authorities promised to protect the rights and benefits of more than 2,000 workers of the China's Taiwan-invested footwear manufacturer KaiYang in Hải Phòng after the company’s director-general fled the country on Sunday.

According to the workers of the company based in the city's Kiến Sơn District, they arrived at work on Monday morning as usual only to discover that all the buildings were sealed off by a bank because the company’s assets had been mortgaged.

The Taiwanese director-general Huang Chang Che, along with 17 experts and technicians, fled the country without an explanation.

At noon, the workers were allowed inside the buildings to retrieve their personal belongings under the watch of security personnel and staff from Vietnamese commercial bank SeABank, headquartered in Hà Nội.

The company’s 2,200 workers and more than 160 office staff said they had not received their July wages, which they should have been given on the 10th of August. The company had only made social insurance payments for their employees up until the end of 2018.

On Saturday, many workers were summoned to work extra hours but they were not told about the fate of the company.

Chu Thị Kim Oanh, head of KaiYang’s trade union, said the company’s board of directors in Taiwan had agreed to fly to Việt Nam on Wednesday to handle the issues, including paying the workers' July wages and getting the company back on track.

On Monday, Hải Phòng trade union representatives and local authorities visited the company to get a hold of the situation and urged workers to remain calm and co-operate with authorities.

In the afternoon, Chairman of Hải Phòng People’s Committee Nguyễn Văn Tùng asked Kiến An District People’s Committee to work with the company to guarantee the workers’ benefits while ensuring security and the safety of the company’s assets, Vietnam News Agency reported.

The municipal People’s Committee has also ordered the city’s insurance agency to immediately handle sickness and maternity insurance payments for the workers.

Tùng said that when the company resumes operations, workers can start to come back and work.

If the company has incurred bad debts, he promised the city’s government would prioritise the workers’ legitimate benefits above all else. — VNS