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Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh city – Tens of thousands of Vietnamese who had made a living in Ho Chi Minh City, the epicenter of the country’s COVID-19, returned home in despair after the authorities lifted the strict stay-at-home order last week, raising concerns that contagious Delta variants may be found in the country It is spread in some areas where vaccination rates are still low.
The mass exodus that began on Friday has caused local officials in the Mekong Delta and Central Highlands to scramble to track and isolate returnees, many of whom are desperate to return home after months of lockdown without a job or enough food. Ho Chi Minh City and surrounding provinces.
So far, among the 160,000 people who have returned to their hometowns, at least 200 positive cases have been found. Revitalization news, Vietnam News website.
Nguyen Chengping, a local official in An Giang Province in the Mekong Delta, was quoted as saying: “Our province has a hard time coping with the crowds returning to China at this time.”
“For the past three days, we have been working non-stop, receiving, screening, testing and providing food and lodging for people,” he said on Tuesday. “People ride motorcycles day and night and it rains, so the duty officer must buy raincoats for everyone. We also provide dumplings, bread and drinking water to save them from hunger and thirst.”
He said that of the 30,000 people who arrived in Anjiang by motorcycle, only half have been tested so far. Approximately 44 test results were positive.
Since the authorities relaxed the strict blockade, at least 160,000 people have left Ho Chi Minh City and surrounding provinces [Stringer/ Reuters]The influx of population made it impossible for local authorities to screen returnees for COVID-19, so much so that at least two provinces in the Mekong Delta – Suzhuang and Hau Giang – required the central government to suspend transportation from Ho Chi Minh City and its surrounding areas Set off. surrounding area.
Jinmao Province, worried about a surge in cases, suspended plans to relax COVID-19 restrictions on Monday and told residents to go out only when necessary.
“We are afraid of dying here”
It shouldn’t be like this.
When the authorities cancelled the strict stay-at-home orders in Ho Chi Minh City and the surrounding provinces of Long An, Binh Duong, and Dong Nai (Vietnam’s economic power and home to about 3.5 million migrant workers), they were not allowed to travel between the provinces.
But after months of blockade, in the last few weeks, people could not even go out for food, and many migrant workers were eager to return to their homes.
When the stay-at-home order ended on Friday, a desperate scene was staged at the checkpoint in Ho Chi Minh City. A video that day showed that migrant workers kneeled down, offering incense to the security forces in the customary way that Vietnamese pray to their ancestors, begging soldiers to let them leave the city.
“You are afraid of your boss scolding you to let us go, but we are afraid of dying here,” a woman said.
Thousands of people rode motorcycles at another checkpoint on the southwestern edge of the city in Pyeongchang district early Friday morning. Huddled together, The children slept on the side of the road waiting to be let through.
“I have nothing to eat. I have eaten instant noodles recently,” said Lang Shiqing, one of the men waiting at the checkpoint. Tell A local camera crew in Vietnam. “I am a bricklayer. I have been unemployed for four months. I have no money to buy food.”
Another woman, Tran Thi Thanh, said that she did not know how to survive in Ho Chi Minh City.
“I still owe 40 million VND [$1,762] And I have no money to buy food. “Tell me how can I stay?” I don’t want anything now, I just want to go home,” she said.
When dawn was approaching, when the security forces refused to let the workers through, a melee broke out and people overturned the roadblocks that prevented them from leaving the city.
Nguyen Thao, a 32-year-old resident of Ho Chi Minh City, told Al Jazeera: “They broke the barrier between Ho Chi Minh City and Long An province to go home after starving here for four months.” “This is the first time I have seen such a thing. If people are not pushed to the edge of life, they will not be so aggressive…I think they must break the rules at this time to survive.”
A similar scene took place in the neighboring Binyang province on Saturday. video Shows the crowd confronting police wearing riot gear.
Long way home
In the chaos, the authorities in Ho Chi Minh City changed their strategy to allow people to leave, but stated that returnees must be tested and quarantined when they return to their homes. While continuing to urge people not to be “unattended,” the authorities arranged 113 buses on Saturday to take 8,000 migrants home. On Tuesday, police in neighboring Dong Nai Province escorted 14,000 motorcyclists out of the area.
However, there are still thousands of people returning without official supervision.
Pictures posted to local media on Sunday showed tired travelers lying tiredly on piles of bricks and on the ground while waiting for treatment at the isolation facility in Dak Lak province.other picture Since Tuesday, dozens of people have tied their luggage to motorcycles and traveled thousands of kilometers in the rain.
Some people even try to walk home.
The local TV station Yeah TV published an article picture On Sunday, on Facebook, a man walked on the highway in a stroller with his two young children. According to the channel, the man departed from Dong Nai and walked 39 hours to his home in Tra Vinh province.
The market in Ho Chi Minh City opens as the authorities relax strict stay-at-home orders[Govi Snell/Al Jazeera]
Ho Chi Minh City relaxes its lockdown after 60% of the adult population received two doses of COVID-19 vaccine [Govi Snell/Al Jazeera]Analysts and charity workers blame the Vietnamese government for the chaos.
They said that the authorities failed to provide sufficient assistance to migrant workers in Ho Chi Minh City and its surrounding areas during the months of restrictions, which began in late June and expanded to an almost complete ban on leaving their homes on August 23. .
Approximately 130,000 soldiers were deployed to the city to enforce the ban, and more than 300 roadblocks — some with barbed wire — were set up to prevent people from moving between regions.
“The government’s support is too little. It will never be enough,” Ha Hoang Hop, a senior researcher on the Vietnam Studies Program at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, told Al Jazeera. “[They left] Because they have lost their jobs and have no new job opportunities. “
Some people find it difficult to find enough food.
“People’s faces are very gloomy,” Ngo Thi Bich Huyen of Saigon Children’s Charity told Al Jazeera. “They have no money to eat, no money to pay the rent, and the children have no milk to drink. They can only rely on a pile of vegetables or rice or some church or charity food.”
The tribulation continues
Ho Chi Minh City’s blockade is lifted – and with it 99% Of the urban adult population received at least one dose of the vaccine and 60% of both vaccines at the same time-however, the departure of migrant workers did not end their ordeal.
Although many returnees received at least one jab, Ho Chi Minh City is still recording thousands of new cases every day; City Report There were 2,490 positive cases and 93 deaths on Monday, while the single-day peak of COVID-19 in early September was 8,499 infections and more than 200 deaths.
At the same time, the vaccination rate in the provinces where migrant workers return is lower.
In the provinces with the largest number of returnees—Anjiang, Jianjiang, Duole, and Suzhuang—the vaccination rates of those who received a single dose ranged from 13.7% in Duole to 41.8% in 2017. Soc Trang had the lowest complete vaccination rate at 4.7%, while An Giang had the highest complete vaccination rate at 8%.
Vietnam’s vaccine supply is limited, and its vaccination activities give priority to large cities and the hardest-hit area Ho Chi Minh City.As a result, only 10.9 million people in the country were vaccinated, only more than 11% Its population.
Fearing that returnees might cause a delta epidemic, local authorities asked workers to pay for the quarantine period, but many people said that after months of no income, they could not afford it.
A Vietnamese economist who asked not to be named told Al Jazeera: “At present, all primary and secondary schools have been converted into temporary dormitories.” “These inter-provincial immigrants also need to pay 80,000 VND. [$3.50 ] If they have been vaccinated at least once and have undergone two PCR tests, they will be isolated for 7 days a day. “
The PCR test costs 700,000 VND per person, which is about 30 U.S. dollars.
“You have to quarantine for 14 days at your own expense,” he said. “Many people will have difficulty paying.”
With the lifting of the blockade, the barbed wire barrier in Ho Chi Minh City was demolished [Govi Snell/Al Jazeera]The charity worker Huyen of the Saigon Children’s Charity helped a family during the lockdown and was one of those struggling with testing and quarantine fees after leaving Ho Chi Minh City.
A family of five lives near Huyen’s residence in the city’s Go Vap district, but when she visited them at the end of September, they were gone.
“I called him and asked,’Where are you?’ and asked where he went, but he said,’I have no money and I can’t pay the rent, so I have to go back,'” Huyen said.
Now the family is quarantined in Can Tho, in the Mekong Delta region, and the person she talked to is worried about how to pay for quarantine and support the family.
She said: “His family needs to be quarantined for 14 days, but he is also worried about how to pay the money because he told me that a person needs to pay 80,000 US dollars a day.”
“It’s very difficult because he still needs some money to pay for the child’s food.”
“This is a very sad story.”
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