Labor trafficking increased significantly in both numbers and scope as Vietnam aggressively expanded its labor export markets. In the first two months of 2008 alone, some 15,000 workers were sent to Taiwan, Malaysia, South Korea, Qatar and other countries. In January 2008, Vietnam and Qatar reached an agreement to increase the number of Vietnamese workers in this Middle East country tenfold from the current level of 10,000. In late February, the case of 176 Vietnamese garment workers, all women, at W&D Apparel made headline news in Jordan. Sent to Jordan as part of Vietnam’s strategy to increase labor exports to the Middle East, these women found themselves victims of exploitation, forced to work 16 hours a day but paid only a fraction of the wages promised in the contract. When these workers went on strike to demand compliance with the contract, the Taiwanese employer sent in the security guards and the local police to drag the strikers to work, causing severe injuries to many workers. The strikers were denied medical treatment and received insufficient food. A few weeks later the Vietnamese government sent a multi-disciplinary delegation to Amman to convince the workers to return to work. When this attempt failed, Vietnam’s Communist Party, the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids, and Social Affairs (MOLISA), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Public Security publicly denounced the strikers for having collaborated with overseas anti-government forces to oppose the Government of Vietnam. There are signs of collusion between well-placed government officials and the labor trafficking syndicate.
