Handing over gifts to a family hit by COVID-19 in Ho Chi Minh City (Photo: VNA) Hanoi (VNA) – The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) held a teleconferencein Hanoi on September 24 to announce a report assessing COVID-19’ssocio-economic impacts on vulnerable households in Vietnam, and another on the design and implementationof the Government’s second support package for those hit by the pandemic.
Thesurvey polled 498 households and found out that 88 percent of them had jobsaffected in July and 63.5 percent had income reduced by 30 percent and abovecompared to December 2019.
Thoseworking in the tourism, hospitality and transportation sectors were the hardest hit.
Mentalhealth is an emerging urgent issue because the lockdown situation is commonplace andprolonged. Up to 66.4 percent of respondents expressed their concern over thepandemic's impacts.
Cutting expenditure is the most common responseemployed by 79.4 percent of the households. As many as 71 percent cut foodcosts so that food security is also a problem.
Amajority of respondents said they have yet to receive assistance from theGovernment’s second support package.
As thepandemic impacts in Vietnam are significant, the reports recommended that theGovernment should issue a new cash support programme with greater financial resources.
Pham Minh Thu, a researcher from the Ministry ofLabour, Invalids and Social Affairs’ Institute of Labour Science and SocialAffairs, said in the short-term, it is necessary to increase cash budget to meetpeople’s minimum living standards and use advanced technologies to offer timelysupport to individuals.
UNDP Resident Representative in Vietnam TerenceD. Jones talked about several trends that were mentioned in the two reports andhailed the Vietnamese Government for taking comprehensive health and socialmeasures to mitigate the spread and impacts of the pandemic./.
