Parties in all-out effort create understanding over alien worker issues
By Digital Content



BANGKOK, June 18 -- Many parties are making every effort to build understanding with employers and foreign workers about labour regulation in a bid to dismiss the rumour and the workers' misunderstanding that Thailand is about to eject them.

Police and military representatives made announcements and leafleted Cambodian workers at the Rong Klua market in Sa Kaeo's Aranyaprathet.

The authorities ruled out the possibility of rounding up alien workers.

However, hundreds of Khmer workers continued to leave the province for Cambodia.

Thai authorities and vendors at the market tried to create a friendly atmosphere with Cambodians by staging concerts, handing out food and drinking water, and deploying more than 10 trucks to carry them to the adjacent Cambodian town of Poipet.

Some Cambodian workers said they would be back.

From June 1 to 17, more than 84,000 Cambodians crossed the border in Aranyaprathet to Cambodia.

Rayong's provincial governor ordered concerned parties to restore confidence among employers and foreign workers as the exodus of Cambodians had severe impacts on Thailand's local agriculture, tourism, restaurants and construction sectors. The governor also ordered the regulation of foreign workers in the eastern province.

Panitan Wattanayagorn, political science lecturer at Chulalongkorn University, said 3 million foreign workers had yet to be regulated and they included what he termed as 'the highly problematic' Rohingyas.

Regulation would provide workers from neighbouring countries with basic rights, protect them from human trafficking and improve Thailand's national image, he said. (MCOT online news)


-- TNA 2014-06-18

If i was the Cambodians, I would make the the Thai,beg. After all the years of exploitation!

Seems a double standard to ignore the ones here illegally, may better to offer them an amnesty if they register for a work permit.

3 million?

"

Thai authorities and vendors at the market tried to create a friendly atmosphere with Cambodians by staging concerts, handing out food and drinking water,"

Free haircuts, concert tickets and access to world cup viewing etc might work!

it seems like nothing to us to shell out 5,000 baht for a work permit, but many of these workers do not make that in a month.

The unremarked on problem is the cost of the permit versus the pay they receive here....

It is the crux of the problem. And if companies pay for the work permit, they deduct more from wages than the permit costs...and it goes around and around. This issue is not color blind either. More yellows employ illegal workers than reds -- by a wide margin.

Worse, many countries of origin demand to be paid taxes on top of the taxes the foreign workers pay here, including the Philippines, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia. Paying a work permit and double indemnity for taxes drives people making very little into drawing a conclusion --

Be illegaal..

Seems a double standard to ignore the ones here illegally, may better to offer them an amnesty if they register for a work permit.

Make that a blanket amnesty and everyone will be happy, all past misdeeds forgiven.

Oops, that didn't work last time, caused a few minor hiccups!

Don't worry, there's some forum members here who think this isn't such a big deal, well if it wasn't, the Junta and the Cambodian Ministers wouldn't be pulling out all the stops to get them all to change their minds would they?

it seems like nothing to us to shell out 5,000 baht for a work permit, but many of these workers do not make that in a month.

The unremarked on problem is the cost of the permit versus the pay they receive here....

It is the crux of the problem. And if companies pay for the work permit, they deduct more from wages than the permit costs...and it goes around and around. This issue is not color blind either. More yellows employ illegal workers than reds -- by a wide margin.

Worse, many countries of origin demand to be paid taxes on top of the taxes the foreign workers pay here, including the Philippines, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia. Paying a work permit and double indemnity for taxes drives people making very little into drawing a conclusion --

Be illegaal..

More yellows employ illegal workers than reds -- by a wide margin.

You obviously don't live up country. Even poor farmers are happy to exploit ilegal workers, political colour has nothing what so ever to do with that willingness to exploit.

hub of smiles

not for the cambodians so it seems