Home builders badly in need of labour

Home builders badly in need of labour

The labour shortage in the house construction sector is expected to be exacerbated as the planned eight-year transport development scheme, worth 2.4 trillion baht, gains momentum.

Issara Boonyoung, honorary president of the Housing Business Association, said the property sector was already unable to fill about 300,000 construction jobs and the huge transport projects would draw even more labour, worsening the shortage in the long run.

Transport investment was estimated at 120 billion baht next year, which might not have an immediate severe impact because it might fund old projects, he said. The impact would be more powerful after 2016, he predicted.

Mr Issara also complained that constructors still had no direct access to labour supplies through the new one-stop labour service centres, as job brokers were taking all those who register.

Chakporn Oonjit, director of the Construction Institute of Thailand, proposed that Vietnamese workers be brought in, in addition to Lao, Cambodian and Myanmar workers, because they were also southeast asian and had a similar culture.

It was reported that from June 26 to July 28 the registration of Lao, Cambodian and Myanmar workers who had entered Thailand illegally totalled only about 167,000. Registration occurred at one-stop service centres in Samut Sakhon, Samut Prakan, Chachoengsao, Chon Buri, Rayong, Ayutthaya, Surat Thani and Songkhla.

Authorities said that in Samut Sakhon alone there were an estimated one million workers from the three neighbouring countries.

Sompong Sakaeo, director of the Labour Rights Promotion Network Foundation, said authorities should open more than one alien labour registration centres in each big province and register the foreign  workers who had no employers too. He said there are a large number of self-employed foreign workers in Thailand.

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