Job placement brokers agree to cut fees to protect workers

More than 80 job placement firms have signed the first-ever agreement to cut placement fees to comply with the government's policies on labour protection and human trafficking.

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, who oversaw the ratification of the agreement yesterday, said the new labour pact would bring about better protection for Thai workers seeking jobs overseas.

Department of Employment regulations state that the maximum fee for overseas job placement could not exceed four times the agreed monthly salary of the worker, but some were being charged 10 times their salary because of lax enforcement of the rules, Rangsan Anant, secretary-general of the Thai Overseas Manpower Association, said yesterday.

For example, a Thai labourer applying for work in Taiwan has to pay as much as 120,000 baht yet earns only about 15,000 baht a month.

Mr Rangsan said that consequently many Thai workers, especially those taking jobs in Taiwan, were forced to work without pay for the first one or two years to pay off the high job placement fee.

He said the debate about sensible job placement fees had been going on for more than a decade and until now had gone nowhere.

The new agreement would help improve the shattered reputation of Thai job placement firms that send workers overseas, he said.

Mr Rangsan said he hoped the agreement could be activated within three months.

A labour expert, however, felt ratification of the pact would not work in the long run.

Saman Laodamrongchai, a labour researcher at Chulalongkorn University, said his own studies had shown the root cause of workers being taken advantage of was collusion between high-ranking officials and politicians in the Labour Ministry and dishonest job brokers.

He said that labour officials and politicians had often worked behind the scenes to get the ministry to endorse requests by companies closely connected to them to send workers to another country.

These people also ensured the companies escaped punishment when they were found out to have overcharged workers or when they failed to find jobs as promised.

Ratifying a pact that is not going to be enforced seriously by the Department of Employment would work for only a short time, Mr Saman said.

After that the old problem would recur, and if caught breaking the regulations, dishonest job placement companies would simply close down to avoid punishment.

He said such breaches had profited job placement firms by as much as 30 million to 50 million baht, yet they are required to place a guarantee of only 5 million baht.