At 8 p.m. Tuesday, Thu Hang, an administrator of a frozen food import-export company in Dong Da District, told regional police “I don’t know if ward officials will issue me a new travel permit or not.”
She was worried sick, but later saw Hanoi would allow people to use their old travel passes, lifting the burden to some extent.
According to the new announcement, people could use both new travel permits (embedded with QR codes) and old versions (without QR codes) to travel around starting Wednesday. But this will be temporary, with both formats merged into one later on.
“All my hard work was in vain,” the 27-year-old lamented.
Applicants wait outside Me Tri Ward police station to apply for new travel permits, Sept. 6, 2021. Photo by VnExpress/Pham Chieu |
Hang’s company specializes in distributing frozen food to restaurants and kitchens in industrial zones.
Her journey to apply for seven travel passes in the past four days hasn’t been easy. Before that, she listed out seven “indispensable” employees, including a security guard to look after the facilities and a sales person to do paperwork.
After she called the support hotline, police instructed her to apply for the new permits from the city’s department of industry and trade. But when she asked the agency, she was told to wait.
Not knowing which party would issue her new permits, Hang prepared two sets of documents and sent them to both. But Hang said she had not received any response.
She received an email from the ward officials Monday morning, saying they couldn’t issue her new permits because her job is not in the priority group.
“If food is not essential, then what is essential,” she said.
Hang shared she was “quite shocked” at the time and thought of the frozen food shipments delivered to port subject to prolonged storage fees.
On Tuesday morning, she re-sent her documents to regional police and continued to wait until the end of the day for approval.
But the same night, the change in travel permit requirement hit…