At least 18,445 migrant workers will have to return to their home countries after they failed to prove a work relationship with their employers, Ananchai Uthaipatanacheep, spokesman for the Labour Ministry said yesterday.
As of Tuesday, a total of 173,879 employers had been through the employer-employee relationship verification process, required under the 2017 law on migrant worker management, said Mr Anantchai.
The process began on Aug 8 and was scheduled to end yesterday, but it may be extended.
The total number of migrant workers to undergo the process as of Tuesday was 689,091, he said, adding that 670,646 passed verification while 18,445 did not.
Reasons cited for declaring some work relationships as invalid included false claims of the existence of such relationships and the workers being less than 15 years old, he said. The only option left for these migrant workers is to return home and later seek to return to work in Thailand under the bilateral memorandum of understanding (MoU) system, he said.