HCMC denies tardiness in approving foreigners’ work permits

In a meeting with HCMC authorities on Friday, business representatives said they were having difficulties acquiring work permits for foreign experts.

A South Korean company established last year said it took nearly three months to obtain a work permit for a foreign managing director.

A Taiwanese chemical company said it was having trouble bringing six experts to Vietnam to operate new machines. The company submitted its requests at the end of April but has yet to receive the permits.

The company thus implements daily video calls for the experts to instruct Vietnamese staff on use of the machines, but this has proved only partially effective.

The company has had to pay compensation for two delayed orders over the last two months due to the lack of foreign experts and the cumbersome and time-consuming nature of these procedures.

HCMC authorities, however, denied the claim that it takes months to process a work permit.

Nguyen Van Lam, deputy director of the HCMC Department of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, said these companies might have used a third-party service to acquire work permit, which makes the process take longer.

"Since I started working at the department in 2016, requests have been handled in less than 20 days, and usually it takes just 10 days," he said.

Lam even went so far as to say that the department had in March begun reducing the amount of time it takes to complete the process from 10 days to seven days.

When business representatives lodged similar complaints to HCMC authorities in April, Lam said he had checked up on businesses’ requests and had been unable to find many of them in the system.

He once again blamed third party services and told companies they should inquire with their service providers as to why it took so long.

Sometimes there are misunderstandings between authorities and businesses, Lam added, admitting that some requests are rejected because businesses don’t follow all the procedures and guidelines for submitting paperwork properly.

The department has been gathering feedback on this matter and has submitted its own feedback to the central government. The issues should be resolved by July, he said.