Even workers who are going abroad as ‘export labourers,’ who have never in their life even seen an American dollar bill, must get dollars to pay to the export labour companies that process them to go abroad.

Vuong Thi Luong of Cao Bang province related that she signed up to work in Malaysia under a programme designed for the poor. Luong is perplexed; she has received a notice from the labour export company instructing her to pay some fees in dollars.

At first, Luong did not know what a ‘dollar’ is. She hurried to ask the chairman of the commune’s people’s committee and learned that it is the American currency. After a bit, Luong went to Hanoi with a bag containing 20 million dong, to exchange them for dollars.

It was a hard for her to find a place where she could convert money. She’d never carried such a big sum of money before (it was borrowed from relatives) and she was fearful that someone would rob her.

Fortunately, a person showed Luong to the goldshops on Hang Da street where she was able to convert the dong into over a thousand dollars. At last she was able to meet the demand of the export labour company

Nguyen Van Phuc from Ha Tinh, who has just returned from Taiwan, also related that he was hard-pressed to convert dong into dollars. He had to find $7000, fully 120 million dong at the time, to pay an exit-the-country fee and deposit money to the company that arranged for him to work abroad.

“It is not easy to convert money in a poor province. There are only a few gold shops that will convert currencies,” Phuc said

Though the law requires all transactions within the country to be settled in dong, Vietnamese companies still unflinchingly quote prices in dollar. Sovilaco, a labour export company controlled the Ministry of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISA), states clearly on its website the sums that labourers have to pay in dollars.

For example, Sovilaco’s Notice No. 53 dated February 1, 2010 on recruiting security guards to work in the UAE clearly says that labourers have to pay a deposit of $550 and an exit fee of $2400. Its notice on recruiting labourers to work in Macau requires them to pay $2250, and those who go to Taiwan must pay $5000.

Oleco, Simco SDA, Vinamotor, Inmasco and other labour export companies are doing the same.

MOLISA: Let the labourers pay in dong

Asked why labour export companies always ask labourers to pay in dollars, the director of one of them explained that the dong/dollar exchange rate fluctuates all the time. Because the company needs to make transactions with the foreign partners in dollars, it needs to get dollars from labourers.

He said that if the company collects fees in dong and then the dollar price skyrockets, the company will suffer losses.

Another source said that although his company quotes the fee in dollars, labourers do not have to pay in dollars. They can pay in dong, but only at the current exchange rate quoted by commercial banks.

Meanwhile, Dao Cong Hai, a senior official of MOLISA, said that the companies quote the fee in dollars to show the work contract labourers must do abroad; they can’t force the labourers have to pay these fees in dollar.

Hai stressed that any company that compels labourers to pay fees in dollars violate the current laws.

Source: VietNamNet/TP