Industry updates
March 2022: COVID-19 cases are increasing in Vietnam. Due to the complicated situation of COVID-19 in Vietnam and concerns over the increasing cases (mostly peak in Hanoi and surrounding provinces), all Better Work services are being delivered in both on-site and virtual format.
February 2022: Vietnam’s Prime Minister has urged localities to complete booster shots of COVID-19 vaccines by the end of Quarter 1, 2022 due to a surge in cases recently. The government has agreed to reopen Vietnam for international tourism from March 15. Vietnam lifted restrictions on the frequency of regular international flights from February 15 as per the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam.
January 2022: Vietnam recorded its first known cases of the Omicron variant in the community in Ho Chi Minh City.
Factory Service Update
- Advisory service: For factories in the North, all in-person visits were postponed and moved to a virtual format (Virtual factory visits/Virtual group factory visits) until further notice. For factories in the South, Better Work may consider on-site services in the participating factories located in provinces with fewer COVID-19 cases.
- Assessment service: Depending on the overall COVID-19 situation of individual provinces, BW will decide to implement either on-site or online assessments. To date, the factory assessments have been done despite a few disruptions due to COVID-19 over the past few months.
- Training service: Many online training courses and e-learning are still being carried out as alternative with the participation of the factories from both the North and South of Vietnam. New courses are added to meet the demand of the factories (eg: Sexual harassment prevention at the work place, Lean fundamentals, 5S + Safety, etc)
Additional Better Work Activities
- March 2022: BW is implementing the GEAR phase 5 under the support of the DFAT, Australian Government. This project aims to train women working in garment factories to progress to higher-level roles, while contributing to increased line-level productivity.
- February-March 2022: The “Factory Ambassador Program” has been implemented with the participation of factory representatives in the Northern provinces. In this program, each trainee will learn about BWV, PICC, basic IR (social dialogue), and sharpen their communications/presentation/facilitation/management skills so that they are able to deliver a Factory visit as a BW Enterprise Advisor.
- February 2022: On 22 Feb 2022, Better Work and VCCI organized the consultative meeting with the aim to provide better support factories and workers to safely recover and adapt to COVID-19. This is an opportunity for the Better Work and relevant parties to discuss and consider the measures to support the factories and workers to quickly recover and safely return to production, thus, each party will outline their next steps to promote the sustainability and resilience of the textile, garment and footwear industry in Vietnam.