Sixty-one people lured by call-centre scammers to work in Myanmar were rescued and sent back to Thailand on Thursday.
The Myanmar Border Guard Force handed them over to Thai authorities at the 2nd Thai-Myanmar Bridge in Mae Sot district of Tak province.
They were welcomed by Defence Minister Phumtham Wechayachai, who was on an inspection trip in the border region, before going through a screening process by immigration officers.
The group rescued from the Shwe Kokko complex in Myawaddy comprised 39 Chinese nationals, 13 Indians, one Kazakh, five Indonesians, one Ethiopian, one Pakistani national and one Malaysian.
Mr Phumtham also said the government is assessing the impact of its decision to suspend electricity supply to three areas in Myanmar where the criminal networks operate — across the border from Tak, Kanchanaburi and Chiang Rai provinces.
The suspension only began on Wednesday so it is too early to draw any conclusions, Mr Phumtham said before travelling to Mae Sot district to inspect operations to tackle drug and people smuggling along the border.
Mr Phumtham, who also serves as a deputy prime minister, said initial assessments show that the suspension of power supplies has had minimal effects on Thai border communities, but the impact on the Myanmar side was still being evaluated.
Sources inside Myanmar have said households and small businesses have been affected but the large crime groups, most of them Chinese-led, had their own generators.
The Provincial Electricity Authority (PEA) said the power cutoff would cause it to lose about 600 million baht a year in revenue, which is only 0.1% of its total, he said.
While acknowledging potential economic losses, the deputy prime minister emphasised that national security is the top priority.
Mr Phumtham said that after the first day of the power cut, illicit activities such as call centre scams in Shwe Kokko were believed to have declined by about 40%.
Regarding Myanmar’s plans to buy electricity from Laos instead, Mr Phumtham said it has the right to do so.
However, he insisted Thailand’s priority is to secure its borders and crack down on criminal operations there.
In Thailand alone, call-centre scams have resulted in 557,500 criminal cases and more than 86 billion baht in damages, averaging about 80 million baht per day, authorities have said.