People in central Nghe An Province registering for Korean course in 2012. Thousands of Vietnamese workers will not be signed contracts with their expected employers this year. Photo by Tuoi Tre
Luong Duc Long, Deputy Director of the Ministry of Labour, Invalid and Social Affairs’ Overseas Workers Centre said it would be sad news for thousands of Vietnamese workers.
The South Korean Ministry of Employment and Labour said it targeted to recruit 62,000 foreign workers this year, up 8% from last year
Of the total, 52,000 will be newly recruited under the Employment Permit System (EPS) programme while the rest would be those who had completed contracts and returned home under the programme.
This decision will affect thousands of Vietnamese workers who are studying Korean. Over 10,000 workers who have completed procedures to work in South Korea for two years will also not be signed contracts with their expected employers this year.
High rate of illegal workers
South Korean authorities have continuously warned since 2011 that if Vietnam took no measures to deal with illegal immigrant workers, they would stop recruiting Vietnamese workers under the EPS programme.
By August 2012, the situation became worse when the rate of Vietnamese illegal workers in South Korea spiked at over 50%. This forced South Korea to halt recruiting new Vietnamese workers last year.
Before setting new quotas for worker employment this year, the South Koreans demanded that Vietnamese authorities adopted ways of reducing the rate of illegal immigrant workers to less than 40%.
“Despite applying several measures, we’ve failed, resulting in the South Korean decision,” said Luong Duc Long.
According to Long, South Korea often estimates the number of illegal workers quarterly and the rate among Vietnamese was still over 50%.
In the second quarter of 2012, among around 2,000 Vietnamese workers who completed their contracts in South Korea, over 1,200 workers stayed in the country illegally. The rate remained at 1,500 out of 2,500 workers in the third quarter of last year, he noted.
Long, however, said even though South Korea had stopped recruiting new Vietnamese workers, they had still renewed contracts for many who had completed their working contracts in the country and returned home on schedule.
Last year, around 2,500 such workers returned to work in South Korea and the figure would reach from 3,000 and 4,000 this year, he added.
