Vietnam Covid-19 Outbreak - Maintaining A Safe Workplace

Under the labor law, the employer is generally required to (1) maintain conditions of safety and hygiene for the workplace, and (2) provide its employees with labor protection equipment. In particular, during the period of “social distancing” from 1 April to 15 April 2020, the Prime Minister has instructed all employers who are permitted to work from their offices during this period (Essential Business Employers) to adopt the following measures:

  • wearing face masks and providing sufficient equipment and facilities for prevention and fighting against the coronavirus as required by regulatory regulations and recommended by medical authorities. For example, according to the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) advice, an employer should conduct regular cleaning of workplace and equipment and provide employees with adequate protection facilities (mask, antiseptics);

  • requiring employees to conduct medical declarations and refraining from going outside, contacting others, and communicating with others;

  • avoiding temporarily non-emergency and unnecessary activities and reducing gathering of employees in limited space; and

  • organising and managing transport to carry employees to and from their workplaces (if any) in order to avoid the spread of Covid-19.

Read MoreInfo
Comment
Written by Nguyen Quang Vu On In ,

A Brief Introduction on Vietnam Legal Framework

A copy of my book “A Brief Introduction on Vietnam Legal Framework” is now available for download for free here. Although the book was written a long time ago (in 2012), we believe it still contains useful information on Vietnam Legal Framework (especially for foreigners who have limited knowledge about the topic). Hope this could help you to kill some time when working from home during the coronavirus outbreak.

Info
Comment
Written by Nguyen Quang Vu On In

Coronavirus Outbreak - The Effect of A Force Majeure Event Under Vietnamese Law

This is our final post relating the force majeure event in Vietnam. In this post, we will cover the effect of a force majeure event after the existence of a force majeure event is confirmed (see our earlier post here). This post is written by Nguyen Quang Vu and Tran Thuy Tien.

In summary,

  • A party affected by a force majeure event will be exempted from contractual liabilities. It is not necessary for a contract to have a separate force majeure clause for the affected party to claim force majeure.

  • The Commercial Law 2005 is not clear whether the default of an affected party must be caused by the force majeure event.

  • The law does not clearly allow a contract to be terminated on the basis of a prolonged force majeure. However, in case of a prolonged force majeure event, the Commercial Law 2005 allows the parties to refuse to perform the contract.

Read MoreInfo
Comment
Written by Nguyen Quang Vu On In , ,

Pledge over intangible assets in Vietnam

Pledge (cầm cố) of property is a transaction in which a party (the pledgor) handovers (giao) a property owned by the pledgor to the other party (the pledgee) to secure the performance of a obligation(s). The law does not clarify what action could be considered as “handover” of a property. Therefore, it is not clear whether one can use intangible asset such as the right to claim debt as a pledged asset.

On one hand, the definition of pledge suggests that the pledged assets must be tangible so that it can be handedover or delivered to the pledgee. In this regard, intangible asset cannot be pledged because it cannot be physically delivered from one party to another party.

On the other hand, other provisions of the law suggest that pledge over intangible assets could be permissible because:

Read MoreInfo
Comment
Written by Nguyen Quang Vu On In ,