Only 80,000 "legal" Myanmar labourers in Thailand

Feb 22, 2007, 7:43 GMT

Yangon - Of the estimated 300,000 Myanmar labourers working in Thailand, only 80,000 hold official labour permits issued by the Thai Labour Ministry, state-run media reports revealed on Thursday.

The actual number of Myanmar nationals working in Thailand is believed to be closer to one million, according to sources in Thailand.

But The New Light of Myanmar newspaper, a mouthpiece for the ruling junta, in an editorial published Thursday, for the first time acknowledged that the majority of workers in Thailand 'are living in the country without having legal documents.'

The daily blamed 'human traffickers' for the massive trade in illegal Myanmar labourers into Thailand and the mistreatment they often endured in the neighbouring country.

On its part, the Myanmar government claimed to have done its duty by issuing licenses to 70 agencies to find job opportunities for Myanmar people abroad and for agreeing to issue 'temporary passports for Myanmar workers who in the past worked illegally in Thailand so that they will become legal guest workers' as of November 6, last year.

Lack of proper Myanmar identity papers is often sited as one of the main reasons that Myanmar labourers fail to qualify for Thai labour permits which are also issued to labourers from neighbouring Cambodia and Laos.

The New Light of Myanmar made no mention of the main reason hundreds of thousands of their citizens are forced to work illegally in Thailand, namely the decline of the economy over the past two decades that is widely blamed on the military's refusal to allow political and economic reforms in the South-east Asia nation.