Vietnam - Women on high-rise construction sites

More and more women have recently chosen to work as assistant masons at high-rise construction sites in big cities, ditching the traditional farm work. For a better and stable income, they are willing to work hard and brave the risk that comes with the job, especially for those that work on high floors.

On her first working day at a construction project in Ho Chi Minh City, a disguised Tuoi Tre female journalist heard a loud cry and saw dozens of workers rushing to help a woman lying unconscious in a pool of blood on the ground.

It was an accident on the job. Lan, the woman’s name, was carrying some iron bars on the first storey of the building when she slipped and fell to the ground. Her leg got pierced through by a sharp iron stick.

Most women on construction sites are not hired as masons but assistant bricklayers whose responsibilities involve mainly logistic and supplementary duties, such as transporting bricks and iron bars, mixing concrete with cement and sand, and setting up the steel framework.

Thuy, an experienced female worker with years of experience in the job, said accidents are a common feature at any construction site. It is so common that they no longer let the fear of getting hurt get to them. As it is, their minds are preoccupied with a more sinister and threatening fear – fear of losing the job and not having enough money to support their children and family.

On the seventh floor of the construction project, 28 meters above the ground, a group of women were preparing a steel framework for concreting. A fainted-hearted newcomer may not be able to walk across a barely foot-wide plank, connecting the stairways to the under-construction floor.

Na, a female worker at the site, recalled, “I was scared to death on my first day of work, having to climb the open scaffolding at such a height. Guts of winds roared past my ears. My heart beat as if it was going to fall out of my chest.

But now, I already get used to it,” Na added.

Another female worker nearby, Thieu Oanh, 36, from Dong Thap Province, chimed in with her story. “Once when I was installing a scaffold, an iron bar fell down on my head. It was really death knocking on my door.”

“I was lucky I wore a helmet at the time.”

Thuy said she could not eat a single bite at dinner the day she narrowly escaped an iron bar falling from the eighth floor to the ground, missing her head by a split second.

“Sure, we’re afraid but just have to accept it. Otherwise, there’d be no food for our children and family,” Thuy admitted.

After a meager lunch at 11:30, the workers retire to a quiet place at the construction site to take a nap. Oanh took the Tuoi Tre journalist to the second floor and tried to comfort her, “Try to get some rest. You will get used to it all after a couple of days.”

Her face and hands flush with sun burn though she has worked as a bricklayer for only three years.

Family burden

Oanh said she and her husband took out a loan of VND30 million (US$1,400) to get into the duck-raising business four years ago. After a few months, a bird epidemic swept through her village and wiped out her fortune.

They had to sell their house and rice farm but were still unable to pay off their debt. The couple and their son migrated to Ho Chi Minh City to find jobs at construction projects and try to save money to clear their debt.

“After two years, I paid off all debts and saved enough to buy a motorbike. The work’s hard but I can save money for our kids to go to school. Otherwise they have to quit school to take a job,” Oanh said.

Her typical work day begins at 7:00 and ends at 9:00 pm, or when work requires, after midnight. On days when there is concrete pouring work, she works overnight.

Oanh and her husband are not the only people working hard to give their children a brighter future. A young girl with thick spectacles named Ngoc goes to school in the morning and puts on the blue-collar uniform in the afternoon and evening at the site to earn money to finish her university education.

“At 18, I came to Saigon to take a university entrance exam at the HCMC Food Industry College and passed it. Then I began working here to have money to pay for the tuition,” she told her story.

The Tuoi Tre journalist left the site after a week. Her little sum of payment was accompanied by a sun burnt complexion, a pair of calloused hands and warm feelings from her fellow women workers.

They never accept to give up.

TUOI TRE

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