Registration of Burmese workers undermined by rumours

Tens of thousands of Burmese workers have "gone underground" because of rumours they will be hit with unreasonable taxes or deported when registering for temporary passports.

Only 2,347 out of 940,944 Burmese workers reported to be in Thailand had undergone the identification process and received a temporary passport as of October 22, Department of Employment (DOE) chief Jeerasak Sukhonthachat said yesterday.

This is far lower than workers from other countries, who have undergone a similar procedure.

As of August, some 58,430 out of 78,605 registered Laotian workers and 55,734 out of 64,834 registered Cambodian workers have undergone the process.

Fewer Burmese workers had reported to the authorities because they had heard rumours that their relatives back home be taxed and that they may not be allowed to return to Thailand, Jeerasak said.

But he said the Burmese labour minister had confirmed the rumours were untrue and that only two people had been detained due to suspicion that they were under 18 and of Rohingyan ethnicity.

Jeerasak said four teams had been sent here by the Laos government had help track down Laotian workers across the country, and that Cambodia was planning to do something similar.

However, Burmese workers needed to report to officials from their country at designated locations along the border.

Jeerasak said employers should register their workers by February. If they failed to do so within the deadline, they would face legal action and their workers would be repatriated.

The deadline for applying for a work permit as well as child registration for foreign workers had also been extended to February, he said.

Office of Foreign Workers Administration chief Thanit Noomnoi said according to a October 27 ministerial regulaฌtion, the visa fee for foreign workers has been reduced from Bt2,000 to Bt500. When combined with the Bt600 fee for a physical examination and the Bt1,900 fee for a year's work permit, workers would only have to pay Bt3,000 in total to become legal.

However, nongovernment groups supporting migrant workers in Thailand say the registration process for Burmese workers is deeply flawed, and the dismal response stems from additional costs of travel, missing days of work, bribes demanded to process their applications and rampant profiteering by others involved in the process such as brokers.

There have also been reports that labourers who register to work in Thailand now will face limits on the number of years they can work here.

More than two million Burmese are believed to be working in Thailand, doing menial jobs such as peeling shrimp for fishing companies.