To resume production activities, enterprises in pandemic-hit localities such as Bac Giang and Bac Ninh are making efforts to ensure safety regulations in the prevention of Covid-19. Many businesses have introduced a closed process from arranging shuttles to arranging accommodation for workers at the factory, to minimise the risk of the disease spreading.

Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Truong Son went to inspect some firms in
Quang Chau, Viet Yen and Bac Giang industrial zones. Photo: Hoang Duong

Meet to be active again

As of June 2, Bac Ninh has 504 enterprises in industrial zones (IZs) that have returned to production. Previously, to prepare for businesses to resume operations, the delegation of the Ministry of Health in Bac Ninh worked with local departments, agencies and branches and trained staff of the Management Board of the IZs on inspecting and guiding enterprises and employees to ensure safety in pandemic prevention and control.

According to Nguyen Huong Giang, Chairman of the People's Committee of Bac Ninh province, the difficulty in pandemic prevention in the IZs is that there are many electronic manufacturing enterprises, the space is narrow and closed. "These are factors that make the disease easily break out and spread if there are no timely prevention solutions," Giang said.

Bac Giang province has four industrial zones, namely Dinh Tram, Quang Chau, Song Khe - Noi Hoang, and Van Trung, which are all temporarily closed. As of June 2, Bac Giang only had 13 enterprises (with 5,133 workers) allowed to operate again under the new model, deployed with the spirit of "implementing a new management method, reducing the number of ensure plans to prevent and control the pandemic, to limit the impact on the whole enterprise”.

As one of the firms eligible to resume production, a representative of Fuyu Precision Technology Co., Ltd (Quang Chau Industrial Park) said that the enterprise produces with four workshops, divided into two shifts. All employees of the enterprise must stay in dormitories and be transported by company vehicles. At the same time, the firm also signed a contract with another company to provide daily meals for workers.

Similarly, to ensure safety in production, Pan Pacific Company Limited (Hiep Hoa, Bac Giang) has taken samples for Covid-19 testing for all employees, arranged disinfection at the doors; measure body temperature in front of the workshop; set up a partition for the dining room and divide the meal time by the hour.

According to Duong Chi Nam, Deputy Director of the Department of Health Environmental Management under the Ministry of Health, the company needs to separate production with groups of 30 people, have partitions, partitions, limit contact and organise testing once a week for all employees. But the difficulty business leaders raised is the issue of testing funding. “The production gap, we can have a solution. Regarding testing, according to regulations, enterprises have to pay their own fees, so each time we test workers; we have to pay 235,000 VND/person/time for testing. If testing once a week for several thousand employees, the company will face a lot of difficulties and even cannot handle it," a representative of Pan Pacific Co., Ltd. confided.

Duong Chi Nam said: "The working group of the Ministry of Health will advise the provincial leaders to improve the prevention of Covid-19 pandemic in enterprises in the IZs. Regarding the testing stage, enterprises need to have a solution to test the whole thing once a week in the peak month, and then it can be gradually stretched. Regarding the cost of testing, it is possible to study a sample pooling plan to cut costs for businesses. Because if it cannot be met, when detecting any positive cases, it will be forced to close the whole factory, and then the burden will be beyond imagination."

Building information data

To ensure the dual goal of both disease prevention and production, the two provinces of Bac Ninh and Bac Giang have accelerated the progress of zoning, pandemic suppression and measures to prevent and control the pandemic in factories and enterprises.

According to Tran Manh Xam, Deputy Head of the Department of Natural Resources and Environment of the Management Board of Bac Giang Industrial Zones, Bac Giang province has set up 35 teams to score, receive documents, check practical conditions and guide firms to resume production. At the same time, the inspection and supervision team of the isolation area and the medical environment under the Special Standing Division of the Ministry of Health has appraised businesses wishing to reopen, and has completed the strict pandemic prevention regulations of the National Steering Committee for Covid-19 prevention and control.

A working group of the Ministry of Health is also focusing on building labour information software to support the tracing and zoning work with all workers in industrial zones and manufacturing enterprises in Bac Giang. Duong Chi Nam said the software will include full information about each employee such as name, ID number, hometown ahnd phone number. The information about the working factory is specified down to the workshop, the vehicles, the number plates, the identity of the driver that the employees go home every day, as well as the accommodation, the contact information of the employees living in the same room and accommodation, from there accessing other related businesses very quickly and simply. The database of this software will cover all 160,000 workers of factories inside and outside of industrial zones in the province.

In Bac Ninh, businesses have arranged temporary accommodation for workers in the factory area to maintain continuous and uninterrupted production. Nguyen Huong Giang said enterprises in the IZs reorganised their production, the plan is to allocate workers in production workshops, transport workers, canteens and dormitories on the principle that they are workers. In the same workshop, it is arranged in the same room and in the same dormitory, to minimise the spread of infection.

After receiving Covid-19 vaccines allocated by the Ministry of Health, these two localities are conducting vaccination for workers working in IZs. This is the premise for a number of production facilities located in the IZs to have full conditions for safety against Covid-19 and to resume production.