LABOUR-THAILAND: Climate of Fear Eases for Migrant Workers

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Aug 17 2004 (IPS) - Burmese migrant workers are displaying a new sign of confidence about their status as labourers in Thailand. Talking freely on the streets of the Thai capital in their own language is one of them.

Such openness is also accompanied by a feeling of security that police harassment will wane.

”I have less to worry now; I feel more comfortable when I go out to meet my friends,” Hla Hla Aye, a Burmese migrant worker employed as a maid in one of Bangkok’s high-rise apartment blocks, admitted in an interview.

This 25-year-old’s sense of ease was shared by some of her friends, also migrant workers from Burma, who had gathered in a leafy compound on Sunday to swap stories and discuss education opportunities.

”There was always this fear before when we were on the streets. So we would talk less or not at all to avoid being noticed,” adds 32-year-old Than Than Htay, who has been toiling as a domestic worker in a number of homes in Bangkok for the past 13 years.

Even migrant rights campaigners are witnessing the emerging shift in the environment, particularly when they have to meet the men and women who have slipped across the border from neighbouring Burma, Laos or Cambodia.

”We can now work with them in the open, unlike before, where we had to distribute information with care, secretly,” Jackie Pollock of the Migrant Action Programme, a non-governmental organisation based in the northern city of Chiang Mai, told IPS.

Till early this year, however, the climate was different, with activists chronicling the regular pace of abuse directed at migrant workers in public.

And there is little doubt as to what led to this change: the Thai government’s new migrant labour policy that is in the throes of implementation.

That Bangkok means business is also being asserted by recent messages directed to Thai factory owners, often a major employer of migrant labour, in provincial towns.

Last week, Labour Minister Uraiwan Thienthong urged employers in the north western province of Tak to treat migrant workers humanely. ”We want employers to uphold humanitarian principles. Don’t take advantage of them (migrant labourers),” she told a meeting of local business entrepreneurs.

Under the new migrant labour programme, where workers from neighbouring countries have been assured more care and freedoms, a key feature is the worker’s right to independently register themselves with Thai authorities.

Previously the worker had to depend on the employer to submit the registration papers.

The new programme, which marked its first phase through July, also guarantees registered migrant workers the right to change jobs during the year, an option that was denied to them previously, and the chance of opening a bank account.

Bangkok also welcomed the dependants of this foreign work force to register in an effort to document their presence and offer a measure of protection.

Such progressive steps and the aggressive campaign launched by the government for all migrant workers to register has resulted in an unprecedented success, say migrant rights activists.

It is reflected in the nearly 1.2 million migrant workers who registered across the country between Jul. 1-29, the period that marked the initial stage of this initiative.

This marked an over two-fold increase in the number of registered migrant workers from the previous year, which averaged close to 500,000. In 2001, when Thailand launched a migrant workers registration programme, only 568,000 responded.

What remained consistent, though, was the breakdown of the countries they came from, with most of them hailing from Burma, followed by Thailand’s two other neighbours, Laos and Cambodia.

Out of this year’s 1.2 million registrations, for instance, over 800,000 came from Burma, nearly 173,000 from Laos and over 155,000 from Cambodia, according to figures from the labour ministry.

Most of the migrant workers are in jobs that Thai labourers are turning away from. They include being domestic workers, toiling in the agriculture sector, the fishing industry, the garment and manufacturing sector and the construction sector.

But despite the current minimum wage enshrined in Thai law – – 135 baht per day (3.30 U.S. dollars) – the monthly earnings of migrant workers vary, some being woefully underpaid while some receiving the stipulated minimum salary.

In Tak province, home to over 100,000 migrant workers – due to the many garment factories located there – the Burmese workforce earn, on average, 50 to 80 baht a day (1.25 to 2.0 dollars), according to migrant right activists.

On the other hand, domestic workers like Hla Hla Aye, who live with their employers, earn 3,500 baht (87.50 dollars) a month.

Such pay scales reveal the scale of exploitation migrant workers face, says Mo Swe, leader of the Yaung Chi Oo Workers Association, a Tak province-based group fighting for the rights of migrant workers

”The new government programme is doing little to reduce the abuse of migrant workers in their work place,” Mo Swe said during an interview.

”They are still forced to work for 11 hours a day and they cannot refuse overtime work even if they are tired.”

But Burmese political activists do not expect this dismal reality to stop the flood of people pouring through the porous Thai- Burma border into Thailand. What is more, the July registration is also revealing the changing profile of the migrant workers coming from Burma.

”We are seeing new faces, people from central Burma and from the areas closer to the Indian border,” Myint Wai of Bangkok-based the Thai Action Committee for Democracy in Burma told IPS.

They are adding to the migrants coming from the Shan, Karen, Mon and Burman ethnic groups, he said. ”It shows how the economic situation is worsening inside Burma and more people are forced to leave for jobs in Thailand.”