Vietnam - Skilled Foreign Staff Welcomed

Nguyen Thi Dan, head of the Labor Management and Wage Division under the HCM City Department of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs, told the Weekly about some notable points of the new decree on foreign labor employment.

Q: Decree 46 will take effect from August 1 this year. In your opinion, how will changes in the decree affect foreign employees in HCM City in particular?

A: Like the previous decree on foreign labor (Decree 34), the new decree still focuses on skilled foreign employees, especially managers, managing directors and experts. Following this new decree, HCM City supports and encourages more enterprises to recruit foreign employees. They must be skilled and experienced workers who can use hi-tech products to help improve the capacity of domestic enterprises. However, the recruitment of foreign employees must be balanced with the employment of local workers.

Could you explain the word “balanced” you have just mentioned?

Both Decree 34 and Decree 46 emphasize the recruitment and management of skilled and experienced foreign employees. This is aimed at helping local enterprises improve their competitiveness. Moreover, the skilled and experienced foreign employees can give training to local workers so that the latter can stand on their own feet in the future.

It is said that one of the purposes of the new decree is to encourage companies and contractors to recruit more Vietnamese staff and tighten control over foreign employees. What is your opinion?

As I have mentioned above, the Government has clarified the targeted foreign employees working in Vietnam. They should be managers, directors or experts who are skilled and experienced staff. In fact, some foreign enterprises have sent fake dossiers on the skills and capacity of foreign staff in the application for work permits. So, the new rule requires enterprises to prove the skills and capacity of foreign employees when sending the application for permits.

In my viewpoint, excluding the cases of using work permits to serve other purposes, enterprises are the best in choosing the right staff who can meet their demands. Regulations are just the tools to concretize the Government policy on recruitment and management of foreign skilled labor.

Compared with Decree 34, what are the differences of the new decree in the licensing process?

Basically, the licensing process does not have many changes. The biggest change is the time to process the application for labor permits or their extension, which is shortened to within 10 days, instead of 15 days as before.
About the application for labor permits, Decree 46 takes in suggestions from the city, so the decree has clearer and more detailed regulations for the application documents.

One more notable point in the new decree is that enterprises employing foreign laborers have more responsibilities in reporting their recruitment demands and the working conditions of foreign employees.

Reported by Quang Tuan


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