The Thai Chamber of Commerce has urged employers to speed up registering their illegal migrant workers by the Monday deadline, saying the number of applications to date was unrealistically low.
Poj Aramwattananont, vice-chairman of the chamber, said on Thursday that the number of registrations in domestic service, construction and farming sectors was very low and did not reflect the actual numbers of migrant workers in the sectors.
The government opened 100 registration centres nationwide. Each could handle up to 2,000 workers a day but applications were filed for 700-800 workers daily.
He said that the private sector had asked the government to postpone legal action against illegal migrant workers and sought the July 24-Aug 7 grace period for their registration before harsh punishments under a new law take effect.
Under the new executive decree on the employment of foreign workers, an employer with illegal foreign workers will be fined up to 800,000 baht per worker while the employees face a jail term up to five years.
If the deadline passes, the private sector could not seek another extension, Mr Poj said.
He also said a common misunderstanding was that a household with only one migrant worker did not need to register him or her when in fact it had to, he said.
Sombat Niwetrat, deputy director-general of the Employment Department, said from July 24 to Aug 3, some 113,000 employers registered 396,000 undocumented migrant workers -- 59% from Myanmar, 27% from Cambodia and 14% from Laos.
Most registered workers, or 23%, were in farming, followed by construction (20%), food and beverage sales (9%) and domestic services (7%).
