Foreign workers are useful. They fill the jobs we don’t have the proper skills to do, or the jobs that we simply don’t want to do.
Hence, subeditors at English-language newspapers are from English-speaking countries, as are native English-language teachers. Hence, construction workers and maids, who used to be from Isan, are now predominantly the economically disaffected from Myanmar, as Isan has become more prosperous over recent decades.
Economically, capitalistically it makes sense. But not everyone likes foreign workers.
"It's been about 10 years since we have faced the problem of foreigners stealing our jobs," an angry Suphachai Wattanaparintorn, vice-president of the Phuket Professional Guide Association, said in an interview published in the Spectrum section this past Sunday. "The Koreans came first, now it is the Russians and Chinese."
Mr Suphachai was speaking of the influx of foreign tour operators in Phuket. The answer to this dilemma is twofold. First, in the spirit of capitalism, local operators should upgrade the quality of their services, cater to the needs and demands of the tourists, and price their packages strategically.
Second, in the spirit of good ethics, stop cheating. Get local tour operators, taxi drivers, people who rent out jet-skis, and others to stop cheating tourists. While at it, get them to stop cheating us Thais too.
According to the Provincial Office of Commercial Affairs, Russians topped the list of foreigners flying directly into Phuket airport in the first quarter of last year, 130,000 of them, followed by Chinese (121,000), Swedish (62,000), Australians (57,000) and South Koreans (47,000).
If the Swedish and Australians aren’t the big problem, perhaps it’s because English isn’t a big issue. If the problem is more with the Russians, Chinese and Koreans, then perhaps Thai operators need to employ staff fluent in those languages.
If sufficient numbers of Thais who are fluent in those languages cannot be found, then perhaps consider what newspapers and schools do, hire native speakers. But really, the language barrier is the least of the problem. The issue here is trust, or lack thereof.
Tourists don’t trust local operators, because local operators have a reputation for cheating. Tourist scams make the news often enough. Even the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) agrees on this.
"It is true that the problem affects local business operators, however they have to ask themselves if they are partly the cause of the problem," said Pol Col Yanapol Yungyuen, deputy director-general of the DSI in the Spectrum report. He was referring to the fact that local operators are losing out to illegal foreign operators because of foreigners’ fears of being cheated.
If tourists prefer tour operators who speak their language fluently, that’s understandable. If they prefer operators who don’t cheat them, well, can we blame them? If it’s a matter of legality, then consider this.
In this globalising world Thailand arguably is an emerging melting pot. Bangkok and other big cities are becoming more and more multi-ethnic and multi-cultural. The government would also do well to upgrade Thai laws to catch up with the globalising world.
Reforming regulations regarding work visas and even residency could revitalise the workforce, bringing skills and expertise we do not have to help modernise our economy, while bringing these workers into the realm of legality and treating them fairly.
Register them and tax them, it’s all about mutual benefits. But we may be getting ahead of ourselves here. On second thought, no we are not. Since Asean Economic Community (AEC) integration is in late 2015, just over two years away, regulations regarding labour movements should be looked into now. In fact, reforms should have begun years ago. We are not getting ahead. Rather, we have been falling behind.
Upgrading services in order to compete with others is a matter for the business operators. Reforming laws and regulations to comply with the rapidly changing world and the approaching AEC are a matter for the lawmakers. Both issues are a "must" and doing it would be to Thailand's long benefit.
But the heart of the matter is, we can never go "long", as long as cheating is the norm. Thai people, we cheat too much. We cheat each other and we cheat foreigners. Not every one of us cheats, not even most of us. But too many of us cheat too much – and that’s the real problem.
It would, however, be too easy to just say "stop cheating", because no one would listen anyway. After all, how can we not cheat when the environment is just so conducive to cheating?
Imagine a taxi association that controls, say, a popular beach in Phuket. It’s less a labour union, and more a mafia gang. Bus drivers and other taxi drivers caught in the area have been known to be pulled out of their vehicles and beaten up. Taxis belonging to this association overcharge and possibly even drive a couple of tourists in a loop around the island just to get to the Starbucks down the street.
Taxi drivers wait in front of the Phuket governor's residence to submit a complaint about illegal competition to the governor on May 21, 2013. Photo by Achadtaya Chuennirun.
Nothing is done because the president of the taxi association has a brother who’s a powerful local politician. This network of course covers other operators and Buddha forbids there might be ties to uniformed authorities. If you’re an in-the-know Phuket resident and reading this, perhaps you know exactly what I’m talking about.
So we come back to the same theme over and over again, an island, a city, a province, a region or a country that is made up of patchy networks of feudal patronage – where the rule of law more often than not serves the power of relationships and connections.
Measure the feudal patronage network against itself, and everything seems normal. Measure the feudal patronage network against the democracy and rule of law that we pretend to have or strive to have, and the sum is a bunch of cheats.
So illegal foreign operators, in Phuket or otherwise, know this. You’re cheating the cheater. As well, local operators, know this: don’t cry about them cheating us, if we at the same time insist on cheating them.