The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimated that4.6 – 10.3 million Vietnamese workers could be hurt by COVID-19 as of April2020. More than 1 million Vietnamese workers aged 5-17 are joining workforce inVietnam, over half of them do heavy, hazardous and toxic jobs.
Head of the Department of Child Affairs Dang Hoa Nam saidthe rate of child labour dropped from 9.6 percent to 5.4 percent from 2012-2018in a survey that will be announced soon. The rate is much lower than that inAsia-Pacific and the world.
Nam attributed such to Vietnam’s achievements in povertyreduction, saying that poverty is not the only but the biggest cause of increasedchild labour.
Sharing the same view, Hoang To Linh from the ILO in Vietnamsaid COVID-19 prompted many families to use children as a mean to cope withjoblessness, forcing them to go to work to earn a living.
Nam said the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and SocialAffairs, ministries and agencies concerned will review the impacts of COVID-19on child labour and protection, thereby building a roadmap to continuemitigating child labour till 2025 and 2030.
According to him, the department is also working closelywith the United Nations Children’s Fund(UNICEF) and other organisations to build a set of criteria on the enforcementof child rights./.