The trimmers are employed by 24 companies, both public and private, which had contracts with the authorities to maintain the lawn strips, flowering bushes and ornamental trees on the roads’ decorative belts across the city.
Hanoi, however, decided to terminate most of the contracts from July 1st, asking the companies to stop trimming the grass and flower gardens, except in central areas like Hoan Kiem District.
A director of one of the 24 companies affected by the city’s cutback, who asked not to be named, told Vietnam News Agency that his company already had to dismiss 300 workers, or three quarters of its workforce after the decision.
He also said that the company was in financial trouble after it had spent a lot of money upgrading equipment to meet the city’s bidding requirements.
“The contract term was 45 months, but we only had the job for 10 months,” he said. “We don’t have enough money to pay off the debts”.
40-year-old Luu Thi Hang, who has worked for nearly 20 years as a grass cutter in the Hanoi Zoo Ltd Co, said that she was anxious about her job after hearing rumours of downsizing in the company.
“I don’t know what I will do if I get sacked. My family has four mouths to feed and we rely on my job,” she said.
Hanoi Zoo company has so far cut the monthly working shifts of each employee, from 26 to 14, but there was no guarantee that the number would not hit zero soon.
City People’s Committee Chairman Nguyen Duc Chung last week explained the decision as a cost cutting exercise.
“The annual grass mowing expense for 24km of Thang Long Avenue reaches up to VND53 billion (USD2.3 million),” he said at a meeting with residents of Hoan Kiem district on August 15th.
“I personally went over there to look and realised that they only needed to trim the grass, some oleander and hibiscus. 53 billion VND a year for such work is unacceptable”.
He said Hanoi could save up to VND700 billion (USD31.1 million) a year by crossing the gardening work off of the city agenda.
Vietnam Architect Association Chief of Staff Pham Thanh Tung agreed that the authorities’ decision to cut budget spending was necessary, yet a complete cutback would be over the line.
“Without trimming, the grass and plants will look really ugly and messy,” he said.
He suggested that the city consider other measures to cut costs, like using machines instead of human labor./.