14/12/2021 – THANH NIEN – Mai Phuong-
Yesterday (December 13), the Government Portal held an online seminar “Safe production during the pandemic” with the participation of experts and businesses in Ho Chi Minh City.
Speaking at the seminar, Deputy Minister of Health Do Xuan Tuyen said that up to now, we have basically controlled the epidemic situation in Ho Chi Minh City. However, according to WHO and scientists, the epidemic situation in the world and in our country is still complicated. All vaccines have a certain percentage of people who have been vaccinated still getting that disease, no vaccine prevents 100%.
Many businesses have been flexible and adaptive to ensure both production and safe epidemic prevention.
KHA HOA
Therefore, people who have been vaccinated enough can still get the disease, but the symptoms will be much milder or no symptoms. Therefore, both the government and enterprises must not be negligent and subjective. The Ministry of Health is drafting a master plan for epidemic prevention and control in the coming period on how to adapt safely, flexibly and effectively, to achieve the goal of both economic development and control of the epidemic.
In which, there will be orientation and decentralization for provinces and cities to be proactive in epidemic prevention and control with their capacity and actual local situation. But enterprises themselves self-inspection and local supervision are very important to self-identify shortcomings in epidemic prevention and control; rehearsals in different specific situations such as the appearance of F0, the appearance of F1… to assess the risk, help enterprises to more comprehensively strengthen the epidemic prevention and control, ensure better production activities.
Assoc. Prof-Dr. Tran Hoang Ngan, Director of the Institute for Research and Development of Ho Chi Minh City, said that after the city had basically controlled the epidemic and switched to flexible and safe adaptation, many enterprises began to recover production and business activities. Up to now, there are 88 projects in the hi-tech park with about 48,000 employees that have restored 100% of their operations. Besides, in industrial parks – export processing zones, 1,408 units out of 1,412 enterprises have resumed operation with over 280,000 employees. At the same time, businesses outside this area have also started to resume operations to quickly fulfill orders from many markets in many countries for the winter and Christmas. This has contributed to bringing the country’s import-export turnover to continue to increase in recent years and is expected to reach a record of $640 billion by the end of the year.
Enterprises still need support
According to Mr. Tran Viet Anh, Vice President of Ho Chi Minh City Enterprise Association, through this epidemic, enterprises in Ho Chi Minh City have adapted to many different situations, but all have one common adaptation, which is that they have have better understanding on health processes. If in the past, enterprises often built processes in activities such as fire protection, environment, etc., now they are interested in health processes. Many companies already have nursing and medical staff. At the same time, enterprises have rearranged production and business activities such as office activities are more online, meetings are fast, with few people; change the new investment line with higher cost, to arrange the workers to stand about 2m apart.
In particular, enterprises that previously only cared about paying high salaries for employees and the working environment, but were not interested in accommodation, now many units are very interested in hostels, there will be a specialized department to check if the motel room is qualified because this is the place where F0 is generated the most… In order to have a safe and efficient production environment, Mr. Tran Viet Anh recommends that the local authorities as well as the Ministry of Health have a plans and determination to relocate labor-intensive factories interwoven in residential areas; must supplement regulations where the red zone is, the orange zone is also entitled to the regime of being in a toxic place; announcement of therapeutic drugs, it is necessary to issue regulations right in the enterprises so that company leaders have grounds to implement.
Associate Professor-Dr. Tran Hoang Ngan also said that now enterprises are no longer embarrassed if they detect a case of F0. But in industrial zones, there must be medical stations to temporarily isolate sick people from production areas; support the car to bring F0 to the isolation area outside to limit the fact that F0 moves on the street by itself. At the same time, he hoped that the Government and the Ministry of Health would soon allow enterprises to produce drugs to treat Covid-19. When there are drugs and vaccines in the country, we will be confident in economic recovery and development. From a medical perspective, the Department of Health of Ho Chi Minh City has submitted to the city an upcoming anti-epidemic plan, in which the important content is to improve grassroots medical capacity and urgently need the sharing from the Central government on additional manpower on the prevention and control of the epidemic.
This expert emphasized: currently, enterprises are not only facing difficulties in disease prevention but also need support from the Government such as continuing to be exempted and reduced from taxes and fees; debt restructuring, debt rescheduling until the end of 2022; support low-interest capital mobilization; digital conversion.
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Enterprises in Ho Chi Minh City in particular and the whole country in general are suffering from very high logistics costs because the infrastructure has not been properly invested. Therefore, I think that the Government should increase the public investment package to invest in infrastructure to remove the bottlenecks in and out of airports and ports to reduce this cost. At the same time, enterprises that make products that cannot be sold are due to a decrease in aggregate demand. The Government should ask the National Assembly to approve an income support package for the people, workers, poor households, and families with Covid-19 patients. This will increase aggregate demand, which will also support businesses to consume products.
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Tran Hoang Ngan
