The level 4 boarding houses with corrugated iron roofs and more than 10 rooms next to each other in Hoa Binh ward, Phu Tho province are the homes of dozens of workers working in nearby industrial parks. Their lives, despite being attached to the work here for many years, are still filled with daily worries.
Ms. Pham Thi Em (from Son La), a worker at Meiko Industrial Park, moved to this boarding house to live for nearly half a year. The room is less than 15 square meters, with a rental price of 800,000 VND/month, and is the only place for the family of 3 - the couple and their son have just graduated from high school, and are working part-time to support their parents.
The narrow space is just enough to accommodate a large bed, an old dining table and a mini gas stove placed close to the entrance.
In the hot summer, the whole family only has one electric fan running all day and night. The furniture in the room is hung high to avoid mice, mold and leave space for moving.
"There are days when I finish cooking and the whole room smells of grease, it's stuffy, it's hot when I open the door. The electricity and water here are calculated according to the price agreed upon with the homeowner, and the electricity bill costs nearly 400,000 VND per month" - Ms. En said
The next room is the residence of Ms. Nguyen Thi Ha (from Nam Dinh), a garment worker in the Industrial Park on the left bank of the Da River.
Having been attached to this boarding house for 4 years, the life of the mother and daughter is still centered around a small room that is both a place to rest, cook, and do daily activities, and also a place to study for her young daughter in grade 1.
"Every day I come home from work and am tired, when I get home I just hope to have a quiet space to rest, but the room is small, hot, in the summer the tunnel is as big as a furnace, and in the winter the wind is cold" - Ms. Ha shared.
The limited income of workers makes the lives of Ms. Ha and her children always in a state of calculation. After paying for rent, electricity and water, living expenses and tuition for her children, each month she only has less than 2 million VND left to save.
That small surplus, no matter how convenient, is difficult to save enough to think about buying land and building a house. The dream of a stable place to live, therefore, is becoming more and more distant.
With poor living conditions and a makeshift environment, for many workers, this is still a mandatory choice. Because the rental price ranges from 800,000 - 1.2 million VND/month, which is the only amount they can pay.
Meanwhile, the infrastructure of the boarding house is degraded, many places do not have wastewater treatment systems, shared toilets, and there are even no fire extinguishers if there are fires and explosions.
Talking to reporters, Mr. Tong Duc Chien - Member of the Standing Committee of the Phu Tho Provincial Federation of Labor, said that in reality, most of the worker dormitories in Hoa Binh ward have not met the criteria on minimum area and living conditions.
"This is a difficult problem, greatly affecting the quality of life and health of workers" - Mr. Chien said.
According to Mr. Chien, the Provincial Federation of Labor has been proposing many policies to support social housing for workers, focusing on calling for businesses to invest in building accommodation areas, as well as supporting workers to borrow capital with preferential interest rates to improve their housing.
