A company in Can Tho City prepares makeshift beds for its employees so that they can stay at the company after work. Up to 98% of enterprises in the city have suspended their operations - PHOTO: VNA

HCMC – Up to 9,800 of nearly 10,000 enterprises in Can Tho City have suspended their operations due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the municipal Department of Industry and Trade.

Among the 1,090 industrial production firms in the city, 1,018 firms have shut down temporarily, accounting for 93.39%, news site VnExpress reported.

In industrial and export processing zones, only 20 of 170 enterprises remain operational. Over 38,000 employees of these enterprises have temporarily stopped working.

The director of a seafood processing and exporting firm at the Tra Noc Industrial Park said when the pandemic broke out in Can Tho in mid-July, the firm had to ask over 3,000 workers to stop working temporarily as it could not deploy the stay-at-work mode for thousands of people for months. Each worker would receive VND100,000 per day.

On July 13, the Can Tho government asked enterprises in the city to apply the stay-at-work mode to be allowed to operate during the pandemic.

Since July 16, enterprises which did not register to apply the mode had to suspend their operations.

Can Tho recorded more than 3,300 Covid-19 cases since July 7. The city has 170 areas under lockdown.