A free rice dispensing machine for poor people and those out of work is installed at a kindergarten in District 12’s Thạnh Lộc Ward, which is under lockdown. Photo laodong.vn

HCM CITY — HCM City is set to offer a second financial relief package for businesses and workers affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to its Department of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs.

Tourism, transport and small and medium-sized businesses, teachers, laid-off workers, and informal sector workers will be beneficiaries of payments that will be made between this month and December.

Lê Minh Tấn, director of the department, said it was working with authorities in city’s 21 districts and Thủ Đức City to compile a list of affected businesses and laid-off and informal sector workers who are eligible to receive the payments.

The department proposes to pay workers who were laid off for at least a month due to the pandemic monthly relief payments of VNĐ1.8 million (US$78), Tấn said.

The department allocated VNĐ611 billion (US$26.5 million) and VNĐ181 billion ($7.85 million) for businesses and informal sector workers in the first relief package last year.

More than 20,500 lottery ticket sellers received more than VNĐ20 billion ($869.400).

Free food, essential goods

More than 600 workers placed under quarantine at the VINA Kitchen Ware JSC at the Tân Bình Industrial Park in HCM City on June 1 received essential goods and food for free from the Trade Union of the industrial parks and export processing zones. 

They are quarantined after coming into close contact with COVID-19 patients.

Huỳnh Văn Tuấn, chairman of the Trade Union, said the workers got minimum wages and other support in quarantine.

Infected workers would get financial assistance of up to VNĐ3 million ($130.000) and others would get VNĐ1.5 million ($65), he said.

A free rice dispensing machine for poor people and those out of work has been installed at a kindergarten in District 12’s Thạnh Lộc Ward, which is under lockdown.

Disadvantaged people could get free rice and essential goods from a store set up next to the machine, Nguyễn Đức Vinh, secretary of the Thạnh Lộc Ward Youth Union, said.

Some three to four tonnes of vegetables transported from Lâm Đồng Province are delivered to people quarantined in the Thạnh Lộc Ward every three or four days. —VNS