Pham Van Viet, Vice Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Association of Garment, Textile, Embroidery, Knitting, said: "Without an adequate number of workers, the textile industry will struggle to fully recover. We expect the industry to recover about 70 percent of production by the end of the year."

The recovery of production post-pandemic will depend entirely on the return of workers. Leather and footwear businesses are also concerned about losing orders and markets because of a lack of staff.

The biggest difficulty for workers hoping to return to Ho Chi Minh City or Binh Duong and Dong Nai provinces to the ongoing travel restrictions.

According to the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Statistics, the city has about 3.2 million salaried workers. 50-70 percent of the workforce had to temporarily cease working to prevent the spread of the pandemic. The difficulties in the hotspot forced a large number of workers to head back to their homelands in the provinces. Now both businesses and workers hope to return to production as soon as possible.

In addition to preferential policies in terms of credit and vaccinations, transport support is a fundamental solution to encouraging workers to return to Ho Chi Minh City, contributing to the recovery of production post-pandemic./.

VNA