5:27 AM
Royan Idris
HA NOI (VNS)— Temperatures of around 10 degrees Celsius and continuous rain at nights has made Ha Noi a desolate and quiet place in recent weeks. However, in the streets labourers are still working strenuously at all hours in the hope of earning a little more money as Tet approaches. Tran Thi Gai, 48, from Hung Yen Province's Khoai Chau District, is among those night workers. The slim female vendor says at 3pm every day she rides her old bicycle loaded high with bags of baked maize and sweet potatoes around the city to sell. Her working day finishes at around 2 am the next morning, regardless of how horrible the weather is. After eating a small supper and having four-hours sleep, she is again in a hurry to prepare the goods for another day. Every day, except in extraordinary circumstances, her bicyle, weighing nearly 100 kg, makes its journey around all corners of the city. "Selling maize and sweet potatoes at night is a hard job for any one. For women, it is even more miserable," Gai says sadly. However, she says that the long hours and harsh temperatures are nothing compared to the fear that she might not be able to afford tuition fees for her children. Gai confides that she moved to work in the city after her rice field at home was reduced to just 360sq.m to make room for a new industrial park. That provides her with about two hundred kilos of rice each harvest; double that for a whole year. However this amount of food is not enough for her family, so she must eke out a living with a night job in the city. "I have four children, two of them got married but they are very poor so we can not ask for their help. The other two are studying at the local vocational school and their tuition is a big challenge for me. My husband and I even quarrel with each other over the money issue," she confides. Gai says that in the winter people usually enjoy warm dishes so her products sell best in these times. On average, she earns between VND100,000-200,000 (US$4.8-9.6) per day. After deducting the expenses for materials, she is able to keep about half of the earnings. "With such a small amount of money, I have to be sparing with the amount I eat while also renting a cheap of low-roofed room to save for my children's tuition," she says. At a cross-road in Tu Liem District's Ho Tung Mau Street, Nguyen Van Khoi, a 35-year-old motorbike taxi driver, is huddling himself on his bike, with a face pale in the chill. "The weather is so cold that people prefer traveling by car taxis; therefore we hardly find enough customers these days. Standing in the street from early morning until late at night, we get nearly VND100,000 (US$4,08) ", the driver says in a tired voice. Khoi is a farmer in Quoc Oai District, but he does not earn enough from that to earn a living so he decided to move to the capital in the hope of making sufficient money to feed his family, which has been difficult ever since his wife lost her ability to work in an accident. While other people are fully covered with thick layers of clothes, Do Danh Huong, a construction worker from Ung Hoa District, wears only a thin shirt when he works, and still he is bathed in sweat. The 50-year-old puts all of his energy into covering the roads with sand and gravel, patching over potholes and cracks. He has to finish his work before dawn, so he works nocturnally. "My working day starts at 9pm and finishes at 4am tomorrow morning, so people's night-time is my day-time and vice versa," Huong says. "In such cold weather, nobody likes working outside. I myself long to lie in the warm out of the chill. But I have to take this painstaking job as it offers me VND200,000($9.6) for every six working hours, which is much more than I can make from farming," he continues. According to the Viet Nam Social Security office, there has not been any specific research on the health of workers immigrating to the capital so far. But in a study published in the International Journal of Cancer, Pascal Guenel, director of French National Institute of Health and Medical Research in June 2012, said that breast tumour risk increased 30 per cent among female night workers and males working night shifts are almost three times as likely to develop prostate cancer as those who do day shifts. While experts have not been able to discover exactly why this is, it is believed to be related to exposure to light at night. Many Vietnamese labourers still risk their health for jobs in the city as they have no other occupational opportunities in their hometown where high buildings are being constructed in their rice fields, says economist Nguyen Minh Phong from the Ha Noi Institute for Socio-economic Development Study. "In fact, there is no exact statistical figure of night workers in the Viet Nam's informal sector in general and in Ha Noi in particular because their living places are normally unstable," says Phong. He also adds that immigrant workers are not encouraged in the city even though they do not have any negative influence on the capital city's economy. Local authorities have given little support to this type of labour. "Ha Noi's budget is not enough to support such a large amount of workers. In addition, the time when everything is subsidised by the State has long gone," he explains. For the foreseeable future it seems that laborers like Gai, Khoi, and Huong still choose to earn money on the cold nights, because if they don't, how else can they afford to live? — VNS
