Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has asked related ministries and agencies to spare no efforts to gather the remaining workers in Libya and promptly evacuate them from the north African country.

He also asked them to ensure safety, food and medicine for the stranded Vietnamese workers in Libya as well as more than 4,000 others in third countries and bring them back soon at a meeting with related ministries and agencies in Hanoi on March 4.

At the meeting to discuss urgent security measures for the workers, the Ministry of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA) confirmed that 289 Vietnamese workers are still stranded in Libya and are safe.

MoLISA Minister Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan said 125 of these workers are now at Tripoli airport.

According to the MoLISA report, more than 9,000 Vietnamese labourers had been evacuated from Libya to nearby countries like Egypt , Tunisia , Turkey , Greece , Malta , Algeria and Cyprus , as of March 3.

Before the unrest, there were about 10,000 Vietnamese workers in Libya , including 2,000 in Benghazi city and 8,000 in the capital city of Tripoli and surrounding areas.

In an attempt to bring the Vietnamese workers home, five working groups have been dispatched to work with Vietnamese representative agencies abroad to ensure necessary procedures and the orderly repatriation of the workers.

The national flag carrier Vietnam Airlines has already conducted four flights to Egypt and Tunisia to supply food, medicine and clothes for the workers and bring them home.

The International Organisation of Migration (IOM) hailed Vietnam as one of the first countries to proactively and promptly collect its citizens from Libya and implement the task in a safe and effective manner, MoLISA said at the meeting./.