A workshop was held in Ho Chi Minh City on August 12, seeking to further improve working conditions for female workers in the labour-intensive garment and textile and footwear sectors.

Female workers make up 80 percent of the workforce of the garment, textile and footwear sectors, mainly young migrants, heard the workshop, which was jointly held by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry-Ho Chi Minh City Branch (VCCI-HCM City) and Marie Stopes International Vietnam (MSIVN).

The event was part of a European Union-funded project, which targets increasing female migrant workers’ access to quality reproductive healthcare services, particularly birth control counseling.

The beneficiaries of the project, implemented by MSIVN in 2013-2015, are over 100,000 female labourers from eight factories in the southern provinces of Binh Duong and Dong Nai.

Enterprises should be fully aware of constantly bettering working conditions for female workforce, as it, in turn, will increase productivity and sustain stable operations for them, said Vo Tan Thanh, Director of VCCI – HCM City.

Agreeing with Thanh’s opinion, Nguyen Thi Bich Hang, Head of MSIVN also said that good reproductive healthcare services will help forge a win-win situation for both workers and enterprises.

As women account for a large proportion of the country’s workforce, many important policies and laws containing the issues related to them have been adopted, including the Labour Code.-VNA