Vietnamese firm fined for illegally hiring Chinese workers

Phong Nguyen Co. Ltd, which operates restaurants in the resort city of Nha Trang, has also been suspended for two months.

The company hired five Chinese to work at its restaurants serving Chinese food, but two of them did not have work permits.

It was also using signboards with Chinese characters much bigger than Vietnamese letters, in contravention of the law. Vietnam does not allow companies, shops and restaurants to have foreign letters or characters bigger than Vietnamese ones on their signboards.

This violation is rampant in Khanh Hoa Province, which is home to the popular beach city of Nha Trang and is one of the most favorite destinations to foreigners, many of them Chinese, in the country.

Provincial records show that more than 310 foreigners, mostly Chinese, have been caught working illegally in Nha Trang since early this year.

in the first nine months, Nha Trang received 2.15 million foreign visitors, including more than 1.2 million Chinese, which was up 157 percent from the same period last year.