The Ho Chi Minh City Party Committee has asked the Party committees, governments and the Fatherland Front committees of the city’s 24 districts, and relevant agencies to hold activities that support the needy people during the Lunar New Year 2011 or Tet holiday. According to the Committee, special support must be given to top welfare beneficiary families, poor households, ethnic minority residents, and students and workers from disaster-hit areas, which are studying and working in the city. Besides gifts, they can also be given allowances and subsidized transport fares. Relevant agencies have been asked to oversee enterprises to ensure that workers receive their due bonuses before the Tet holidays begin. The agencies need also to adopt certain solutions, in order to prevent labor disputes and strikes, particularly from those enterprises that are unable to pay Tet bonuses to laborers due to financial difficulties, said the committee. The city will organize the selling of ‘price-stabilized’ goods at industrial parks, export processing zones and workers’ dormitories. At a meeting with the presidium of the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor on January 4, the head of the HCMC Labor Federation said the city’s labor union would spend 25 percent of the city’s Fund for the Poor in support of poor workers, during the Tet holidays. In addition, many enterprises of the city have agreed to provide transport fares to their workers. (www.saigon-gpdaily.com.vn [1] Jan 5)
