Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - The reduction of working hours from 48 hours perweek to 44 hours will create difficulties for textile and garments enterprises,according to one leading expert.

Truong Van Cam, Vice Chairman of the Vietnam Textile and Apparel Association(Vitas), in the response to the draft revised Labour Code which made the changein May this year.

The industry is facing many challenges. Reducing the working week would have anegative impact on the industry and the economy, he said.

Currently, Vietnam sets normal working hours to not exceed 48 hours per week,enterprises of many industries such as textile and garment, leather andfootwear still have to use all permitted overtime of 300 hours per year, hesaid.

"With the textile and garment industry with production scale at present,if we reduce by four working hours per week, the industry’s export value willbe reduced by at least over 3 billion USD per year," Cam said.

Vietnam is a developing country, so a reduction means a reduction of productionin goods and services, leading to reducing gross domestic product (GDP) for thesociety and GDP per capita, Cam said.

"Moreover, if the working hour reduces, to maintain the same volume ofproduction and export value of the textile and garment industry at present, thebusinesses will have to recruit more workers, spending more trillions of dongto pay salary for the workers," Cam said.

"This is not feasible because at present, the textile and garment industryhas faced labour shortages and there is competition to recruit workers,especially skilled workers. Besides, the businesses must increase spending,leading to a reduction in their competitive ability."

For many years, enterprises in the garment and textile industry and some otherindustries have repeatedly asked the State to extend the overtime to facilitateproduction, he said.

“We recommend not reducing the normal working hours from 48 hours per week to44 hours,” Cam said.

“For overtime, I agree with keeping the regulation of overtime working hoursper day which is not more than 50 percent of the normal working time in a day.”

However, the existing regulation has caused difficulties for businesses,especially for fashion and seasonal industries such as textiles, footwear andfisheries, he said. The industries will have periods to promote production toensure quick delivery, so they need all overtime working hours.

At present, the State regulates overtime to be no more than 200 hours per yearfor general industries and 300 hours per year for specific industries liketextile, garment and footwear.

Countries in the region also have much higher overtime hours than Vietnam.Therefore, Vitas asked to extend the overtime working hour to 300 hours peryear for general industries and 450 hours per year for specific industries, hesaid.-VNS/VNA