Thai workers in Libya 'short of food'

Labour Ministry officials will leave for the island of Malta tomorrow to try to deliver food and other supplies to Thai workers stranded in nearby trouble-plagued Libya, ministry spokesman Sutham Natheethong said on Wednesday.

Mr Sutham said the team initially planned to charter boats from Malta to take the supplies to the Thai workers, who were reported to have been running short of food in many areas in Libya.

He said the Labour Ministry is trying to help them, but the situation in that country makes it difficult to make arrangements to evacuate them.

The situation became worse after Libya closed its air space, he said.

Labour Minister Chalermchai Sri-on said the Employment Department had been working closely with the Department of Consular Affairs and the 30 companies that sent Thai people to work in the North African country, where more than 300 people, including 111 soldiers, are reported to have been killed in the anti-government riots.

He said there was an unconfirmed report of a Thai worker killed in the protest, but the Foreign Ministry insisted that there were no reports of Thai people hurt or killed yet.

"Evacuating the workers by air would not be possible after the Libyan government announced that the country's airspace is closed.

"There are currently two ways to evacuate them - by sea or by land," he said.

The government had assessed the situation and believed Thai workers would still be able to take care of themselves and would be safer if they remain in their labour camps at this time, he said.

The minister said relatives of Thai workers in Libya can call the Employment Department at 1694 hotline for more information.

According to the Employment Department, about 9,000 of the 23,000 Thai workers in Libya live in Tripoli and Benghazi - the cities where there is the most unrest.

The 30 agent companies and the employers in Libya had made arrangements for four ships to take Thai workers out of Libya to the Mediterranean island of Malta. Each ship can carry about 1,400 people.

All four ships were now waiting at Tripoli and Benghazi ports, the department said.

Other Asian nations are also preparing evacuation plans for more than 100,000 Asian migrant workers trapped in Libya, many of them labourers toiling on construction sites.

The majority of them are contract workers, with 60,000 Bangladeshis, 30,000 Filipinos, 23,000 Thais and 18,000 Indians among those living under Gadhafi's tottering regime.

"This is going to be quite a mammoth operation," India's foreign secretary Nirupama Rao tells reporters. "We will have to not only put in place arrangements for aircraft or ships, but also obtain permission from Libyan authorities for our aircraft to land there."

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has, meanwhile, called for the European Union to adopt "swift and concrete sanctions" and suspend economic and financial relations with Libya.