Ministry proposes 3-month rental support for contracted workers

The Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs is gathering opinions on implementation guidelines being drafted for a policy to provide rental support for workers. The draft is expected to be completed this month and would be applied to formal workers with social insurance.

Workers at industrial parks and key economic regions, who rent apartments between January 1 and June 30, 2022, who have labor contracts signed before January 1 and who have paid social insurance the month before their firm applies for rent support, would get VND500,000 per month for up to three months.

Workers meeting the same criteria, but having signed labor contracts for at least a month between January 1 and June 30, 2022, would get VND1 million per month for up to three months.

It would take at least 13 days from the day workers' applications were filed for them to receive the support money. The total amount, around VND6.6 trillion, will be taken from the national budget.

Around 70 percent of workers in Vietnam rent apartments with less than three square meters of living space per person. Over 1.7 million workers need a stable place to stay while sustaining their families with average incomes of VND4-6 million a month. The majority of workers are incapable of saving up enough to buy a house.

Due to Covid-19, about 2.2 million people in Vietnam had abandoned cities to go back to their hometowns, unable to keep up with living costs in the city. The number of informal workers has increased to the highest level in the past three years, accounting for 57 percent of all employed workers.

It is estimated that around 28 million informal workers will not be able to receive the rental support proposed by the labor ministry.