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While working at a construction site in Mae Sot, a Thai town in Tak province on the border with Burma, Ko Soe, a young Burmese worker, fell and suffered third-degree burns from electric shocks. He remembers fire engulfing his whole body. "The burning started from my shirt. I was in total shock and began to feel very thirsty," Ko Soe recalls.

That was the only moment Ko Soe remembers clearly before he was rushed to the Mae Sot General Hospital on Mar. 14, 2003. Three days later, his right hand was amputated and his leg replaced with a steel rod. But that was not the end of his misfortune. "Unless I also got my left hand cut off, my whole body would have been mutilated as my left hand was becoming rotten and useless," he says, tears in his eyes.

Losing both hands made him feel that it was pointless to continue living. His working hands, after all, had been supporting his poor farming family back in Burma.

Ko Soe endured not only physical pain but psychological distress, especially after realising that even in his most difficult moments he could no longer put his two hands together to pray to Buddha, his only solace.

He was in hospital for almost a month. His Thai employer visited him three times and provided some money for his medical treatment, but he wishes he had more support.

His accident was not the first or last to happen in environments where untrained and unskilled workers, hired for their low wages, toil in hazardous jobs. The implications of this trend go beyond the risks to the workers themselves — a crippled worker means the crippling of the earnings of that worker's family as well. Ko Soe says he knows of five other labourers who also had similar experiences. How many more victims are there that we do not see or hear about?

Since the accident, he has no longer able to work to send some money back to his family.

Meantime, an estimated one million Burmese, finding the opportunities in Thailand better than being back home although far from ideal, continue to be a cheap and often illegal labour force in Thailand and neighbouring countries. Many work in construction sites, factories, the fishing industry, domestic work — Mae Sot teems with some 100,000 Burmese, or more than the number of Thais in the town.

Although they earn less than two to three dollars a day, for them this is better than facing debts or living idly in Burma. "We came to Thailand because we had no jobs and money to support our families. They are just poor farmers who have to pay heavy taxes and are forced to sell their crops to the government," says Daw Khin Kyi, whose son works at a garment factory in Mae Sot.

Stresses a salesman named Akahsu in the northern city of Chiang Mai: "I, of course, want to go back to my hometown. But, I don't know how I can survive there." He continues, "I will go home and start my own business when I have enough savings." In reality though, he has immediate problems — he still cannot figure out how he can earn enough money to send his little boy to school.

Of over a million Burmese migrant workers, hundreds of thousands of undocumented children are said to be taking refuge in Thailand with their parents. These children spend most of their time out on the streets while their parents work all day in factories and cannot afford to provide their youngsters' basic needs, much less schooling.

Conversations with migrant workers show that they are well aware that displacement and migration will continue as long as the military government in Burma fails to resolve the country's political, economic and social problems. These workers may be away from their homeland, but remain tied to its fate.