Myanmar’s labour minister has expressed concerns about Thai policemen extorting money from workers from his country regardless of whether or not they hold legal passports.
U Maung Myint said he had heard reports that Thai policemen were intentionally arresting even workers holding temporary passports, which are considered legal.
“Sometimes they [workers] don’t bring a passport, and these workers have low communication skills,” said Maung Myint in an interview with the Bangkok Post at the sidelines of the World Economic Forum on East Asia.
He said the workers had to pay between 500 and 1,000 baht each time they were arrested, which Maung Myint said was a form of exploitation and “is not good for the relations between the two countries”.
He said he had discussed the issue with Thailand’s labour minister, who said his officials would investigate the matter and inform Myanmar authorities as soon as possible.
Maung Myint said that 1.5 million of the estimated 2 million Myanmar nationals working in Thailand had already obtained passports, with the exception of those living in remote areas as well as those working in the fishery sector.
According to a threat assessment released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in April, Thailand is the largest regional labour market for migrant smuggling and human trafficking, with Myanmar supplying the majority of the labour pool.
It is estimated that US$192 million is generated annually from smuggling about 500,000 migrants from Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia into Thailand.
In a related development, Noeleen Heyzer, executive secretary of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (Escap), said income security for workers was crucial if Asian countries with declining export markets wanted to increase aggregate demand internally.
“People look at labour as a cost and they want the cheapest cost, rather than thinking about what else to cut such as transaction costs, cost of red tape in terms of doing trade and energy costs, for instance,” said Dr Heyzer, who is the first woman to head Escap, the biggest of the UN’s five regional commissions.
She said countries with labour-friendly regulations seemed to do much better because they were able to move up the value chain very quickly.
She added that she supported Thailand’s policy to increase the minimum wage sharply this year because income security generates purchasing power.