Labour minister addresses migrant worker issue in Thailand

The issue of Myanmar's migrant workers in Thailand was highlighted during President U Thein Sein's three-day visit to the neighbouring country in late July.

U Aung Kyi, the union minister for labour and social welfare, relief and resettlement, who also accompanied the president, met with representatives from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working to protect Myanmar workers at the Myanmar Embassy in Bangkok on July 24. The NGOs involved were BATEED Foundation, Mekong Migration Network, and MAP Foundation.

During the meeting, the minister was clarified on the difficulties facing the Myanmar workers in Thailand. Some of them hold no passports, and others saw their passports being seized by employers or brokers. U Aung Kyi promised to take the issue seriously and pointed to the need for cooperation.

At their meeting, U Aung Kyi urged Interior Minister Yongyuth Wichaidit to take appropriate steps to make sure that:
- Immigrant Myanmar workers enjoy the same salaries and wages as their Thai colleagues do,
- Thai employers do not keep Myanmar workers' passports,
- The workers have the right to send their children to Thai schools, and
- They all get temporary passports.

Union Minister U Aung Kyi also visited the temporary passport issuance office in Bangkok, where he gave encouragement to the Myanmar workers there.

He then called on the commissioner of the Thai Immigration Bureau. They discussed measures to prevent unwanted human trafficking cases that could result from sending back Myanmar workers to its border without prior information. The Thai immigration was also asked to charge for issuing temporary passports at the rate fixed by both countries, and to issue stay permits at a one-stop service centre in the form of temporary Myanmar passports.

Thai officials said that some points discussed with Myanmar's minister need to further discussion in detail.

http://eversion.news-eleven.com/

Three migrants gunned down in southern Thailand

Three Burmese migrant workers in southern Thailand’s Phang-nga and Songkhla provinces were shot and killed by unknown gunmen in two separate incidents on 25 July.

Htoo Naing, a 27-year-old Burmese migrant worker at a rubber plantation Phang-nga’s town of Thai Mueang, was found dead at 10pm in the evening with six gunshot wounds, according to Foundation for Education and Development’s executive director Htoo Chit.
Htoo Naing came from Tenasserim division’s Mergui Archipelago in southern Burma.

In a similar incident, Sabei Phyu and Aung Aung, two Burmese migrants working at a shrimp factory owned by Charoen Pokphand Foods Company Limited in Songkhla province across the border from Malaysia, were also shot and killed earlier in the day by two masked gunmen.

The victims’ colleague told DVB that the two were having a chat in front of their living quarters after getting back from working a night shift.

“They were talking at the gates [of the living quarters] when they were shot by the assailants who came on a motorbike. It happened around 4am in the morning,” said the migrant who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

He said another employee, Khin Maung Htun, came out of the quarters when he heard the gunfire and was also shot. He was hospitalised after being wounded in the leg and back.

“He had a operation at the hospital and apparently is in good condition,” said his colleague.
A funeral for Sabei Phyu was held later in the day in accordance with Islamic rites, while Aung Aung’s body was kept at a monastery near the hospital, said his wife Aye Moe.

“We are devastated,” said Aye Moe. “This happened to those who didn’t do anything wrong.”
Htoo Chit said his organisation will work closely with the Burmese embassy in Thailand as well as Thai police as investigations proceed.

27 Burmese migrant workers injured in explosion

A gas explosion at a seafood company in Ranong, Thailand, injured 27 Burmese migrant workers and two Thai workers on Monday.

Fourteen women workers were sent to a nearby hospital while other workers received minor injuries and were sent home, the Karen News Group said in an article on Thursday.

There are as many as 3,000 workers at the Andaman Seafood Company factory where the explosion occurred. Most Burmese workers from the Dawei area. 

http://www.mizzima.com/

Thai authorities rescue migrants enslaved on fishing vessels

Eighteen Burmese migrants forced to work as slaves on a Thai fishing boat were rescued by the Thai police’s Anti-Human Trafficking Division on 22 July at a port 300 kilometers southeast of Bangkok in Laem Ngop district, Trat province.

Kyaw Thaung, coordinator of the Burmese Association of Thailand that assisted the police during the rescue, said teenagers were among the trafficking victims.

“There is a Karen boy and a Mon girl, age 14 and 15 respectively. There were 18 people rescued from the boat,” said Kyaw Thaung.

“Some of them came to Thailand looking for jobs in Bangkok and Mahachai… and they only realised they were being sold when they got on the boat.

“There are about six young Karen males who had been working there for about eight months without getting a penny for their labour.”

He said most of the victims on the boat came into Thailand through a border crossing at Payathonsu, which is known as the Three Pagoda Pass in Karen state.

“I was working in Rangoon before I made contact with a friend there and came to Thailand. We were taken to Thailand via Moulmein and Payathonsu,” said one of the victims Maung Maung from the Irrawaddy delta’s Bogale township.

“The [traffickers] asked us to bring 400,000 Kyat to get us passports. I only had 300,000 with me and gave them that but no passport was provided,” said Maung Maung. “Then I found myself in this seaside town – I was told to work here without pay to cover the 18,000 Baht [the fishing boat paid the traffickers.]

Maung Maung later contacted Kyaw Kyaw Lwin who works with the Labour Affairs Committee at the Burmese Embassy [in Bangkok] who then got in touch with Kyaw Thaung.
In June 11 Burmese trafficking victims were rescued from similar circumstances in Chonburi province.

http://www.dvb.no/news/

The Situation of Migrant Workers

Background

Throughout 2002 large numbers of people continued to leave Burma to seek work abroad. Approximately ten percent of Burma’s population migrates to other countries, according to a report Migration, Needs, Issues and Responses in the Greater Mekong Subregion 2002, by the Asian Migrant Center. People leave Burma for a number of reasons. Rampant inflation, a deteriorating economy and general lack of employment and educational opportunities are factors that cause many people to emigrate. In addition to these hardships, many people living in rural areas are forced to pay heavy taxes to local officials and the military and to sell a large percentage of their crops to the government at below-market prices. For these reasons, many Burmese view their migration as less of a decision than an economic necessity. 

Photo By: Maesai Grace Church

Maesai Grace Church holding the community health training for Burmese Migrant Workers

Ethnic minority people living in civil war zones often have no choice about emigrating, as they are forced to flee their homes to avoid brutal campaigns of violence against them by the Burmese Military. Every year thousands of people flee across the border, primarily into Thailand, to escape these human rights violations which include mass forced relocation, arbitrary arrest, torture, rape, and extra-judicial killing. Some of these people are able to seek asylum in refugee camps in Thailand and Bangladesh, however many of those fleeing human rights violations are not recognized as refugees by the Thai and Bangladeshi Governments. These individuals are left with the choice of trying to enter refugee camps illegally or else trying to survive as migrant workers.

 Photo By: Maesai Grace Church

Awareness Training of Migrant Education Program

Migration from Burma is facilitated by the fact that 7 of Burma’s 14 States and Divisions share borders with neighboring countries. In the west, Burma borders Bangladesh and India, in the north and northeast China, and in the east Laos and Thailand. In a 1999 report by Save the Children UK, Small Dreams Beyond Reach: The Lives of Migrant Children and Youth Along the Borders of China, Myanmar, and Thailand, the authors note that in the past ten years the largest flow of migrants in the Mekong region has been concentrated along the borders of China, Burma and Thailand, with Burmese people making up the largest percentage of the population migrating. The report goes on to note that while China, India, Bangladesh and Thailand have collectively reported hosting over two million Burmese migrants, the actual population of people from Burma living in these countries is likely to be much higher. However it is extremely difficult to obtain accurate estimates as to the number of Burmese working abroad, as many are illegal, and the population as a whole is highly mobile. In addition, some migrant groups are ethnically similar to indigenous populations of neighboring countries, making them difficult to identify as non-natives.

 Photo By: Maesai Grace Church

Registration for illegal migrant workers starts June 15

The final chance for illegal migrant workers in Thailand to begin legal registration will start on June 15. Registration will last about one month.
Thailand’s Department of Employment (DoE) has announced that registration forms are available at all regional DoE offices, The Nation newspaper reported. 

Employers must pay 1,300 baht (US$ 40) per worker for a health-insurance deposit, 600 baht per worker for a medical examination, 100 baht for an application fee and an annual permit fee of 900 to 1,800 baht depending on the type of work and location, according to the newspaper.

‘When all workers are entered into the system, they can be protected and paid more fairly, while being monitored and controlled more effectively. This will lead to better proficiency in terms of social and economic concerns’, The Nation quoted official Suthassanee Suebwongphaet as saying.

After the deadline, employers who hire illegal workers could be fined 10,000 to 100,000 baht per worker, while illegal migrant workers could face a maximum five-year jail term or a fine of 2,000 to 100,000 baht.

During an earlier registration period for illegal migrant workers in August 2009, about 1.3 million migrant workers from Burma, Laos and Cambodia registered. But in 2011, after the February deadline, just 845,139 workers renewed their registration, according to the Ministry of Labour.

There are a total of 550,003 migrant workers from Burma, Laos and Cambodia who hold temporary passports in Thailand. A total of 352,748 are from Burma. Workers support groups estimate that there are about two million Burmese migrant workers, both legal and illegal, in Thailand.
 

Burma to extend migrant workers’ passports

Burma will extend the issuance of temporary passports for registered migrants in Thailand by the end of this year, according to Burmese local media.
Since 2009, provisional passports have been issued to about 700,000 out of 2 million Burmese migrant workers in Thailand. An estimated remaining 500,000 are undocumented, said 7-Day News.

The passports are part of the process to allow Burmese migrant workers to work and travel legally in Thailand.

A migrant worker in Thailand can earn a daily minimum wage of 300 baht (US$ 9.5) compared to as low as $1 a day in Burma.

According to Burmese official statistics, the number of Burmese workers legally employed to work in 15 foreign countries reached 330,311 as of 2010.

Burmese  migrant workers are found mostly in Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, Libya, Thailand, Cambodia, Japan, Switzerland, Brunei Darussalam, United Arab Emirates, America, France, Germany, Qatar and Kuwait.

Mizzima reported in May that Burmese illegal migrants were being rounded up in central Thailand and transferred to Mae Sot to be deported. Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra announced a crackdown on illegal migrant labourers in March.

Labour advocates said information from Mae Sot on the Thai border where the workers were deported suggested many of the workers would be processed through brokers and return to their jobs in Khon Kaen, Kanchanaburi or other areas. They said it was unclear if Thai authorities interviewed the deportees to establish cases of human trafficking or child exploitation prior to their deportation.

Sources said many of those arrested could potentially be classified as trafficking victims, and that up to 30 to 40 child workers between ages 13 to16 were also arrested in the raids.

Thailand and Burma continue to have no systematic and protective mechanisms in place at borders to process Burmese deportees from Thailand.

Sources said many recently deported illegal Burmese migrants would soon arrive back at their jobs with the help of exploiting brokers and traffickers. 

From Mizzima News Agency

Basic pay of K 56,700 in temporary agreement

The Ministry of Labour has set a temporary basic pay of K 56,700 for employees working industrial zones and requested the employers to take prompt action, following a meeting at Kanaung Prince Hall of Hlaingthayar Industrial Zone on 12 June. The basic pay does not include overtime charges and other package benefits, which employees will have the right to enjoy.

On 5 June, a coordination meeting was held for the same issue, and the employers were urged to get involved in the process so that the pay could be standardized.

The temporary basic pay rate was set, following the negotiations made with 38 departments, said an official at the ministry. The industrialists were key players and they should do as requested by the ministry, he continued. He also stressed that industrialists were requested, not forced.

In the coordination meetings, agreement was reached with over 20 factories. Before labour boycotts, the basic salary ran from 8,000 to 30,000 kyats.

Arrangements are under way to submit a bill of basic pay equivalent to that of the international community in the fourth parliamentary assembly, said Minister for Labour U Aung Kyi on 3 June in a meeting on industrial development and challenge.

Workers negotiate pay increase in Mae Sot

Workers at the M Apparel Co. Ltd  in Mae Sot, Thailand, have successfully negotiated a pay increase and better working conditions with assistance from the Labour Protection Office and the MAP Foundation.

The Yaung Chi Oo Worker Association negotiated a pay increase to the rate of the new minimum wage for all workers, including migrant workers. However, migrant workers are sometimes denied such increases and are paid lower wages, said worker sources.

Thailand increased the minimum wage for the region on April 1.  Workers went on a strike on May 15, which lasted 21 days. According to the law, they are now entitled to a minimum wage of 226 baht (US$ 7.1) per 8-hour working day, excluding overtime. Prior to the new law, the minimum wage was 162 baht per day.

Workers said that prior to the successful negotiation, most workers were earning 60-100 baht per day, which included overtime with no days off.

Suu Kyi vows to protect migrant workers

Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Wednesday pledged to better protect the rights of impoverished migrant workers from Burma as she spoke to a crowd of thousands of supporters in central Thailand on her first official trip outside of her homeland in more than 20 years.

The Nobel laureate spoke in Maha Chai, home to Thailand’s largest population of Burmese immigrants, who fled their country for opportunities abroad after years of economic misrule under the former military junta.

But many of Burma’s migrant workers have been exploited, paid low wages, and even trafficked in Thailand, and Suu Kyi, a longtime advocate of migrant rights, offered words of encouragement to the crowd, which responded with exuberant cheers for the recently elected Member of Parliament.

“Our ultimate goal is to create a situation so that our citizens can come back to our country whenever they want to and without any trouble. We have to work together to get to that goal, not separately or in different ways,” she told her supporters.

She called on the workers to train well and to carry out their work “responsibly” in order to gain the respect of their host country.

But she also said that the migrant community needs to be better educated about its rights as workers and to cooperate in protecting those rights “systematically and peacefully.”

“We don't need to feel sorry for ourselves and to be disheartened. History is something that is changing constantly,” she said.

“Although our countrymen must come and work here at this time, please believe that the condition and status of our countrymen will rise along with the changes in our country.”

She vowed to use her time in Thailand to determine the best way to protect the rights of Burmese workers, but reminded those in attendance that they had a duty to both their homeland and their host country to conduct themselves respectably.

“I want you to know that you are not forgotten,” she told the crowd.

Later, after meeting with worker representatives, Suu Kyi again addressed the crowd, saying that many of the problems facing Burmese migrants in Thailand stem from a combination of mismanagement by employers, a lack of clear policy by the government, and a worker population ignorant of their rights.

“I want to suggest forming a small community—a place to gather where there is a large amount of migrants working—so that you can find a way to go through the right channels whenever you are mistreated,” she said.

“We will try our best to get things done in accordance with the law, but you have to do your job too. You have to know what your rights are and where to file complaints if your rights are violated.”

Migrants targeted

Maha Chai is home to the largest Burmese population per capita in Thailand, which relies heavily on low-cost labor—both legal and trafficked—from its two million foreign workers, of which some 80 percent are from Burma.

Workers who spoke with RFA, most of whom did not have work permits, said that they had been repeatedly targeted by corrupt authorities in the area who solicit payoffs by threatening them with jail or deportation.

"The Thais bully the Burmese and the Thai police are the worst. Since we don't have work permits, they arrest us, and extract money from us for release,” one female migrant worker told RFA, on condition of anonymity.

“If we can't pay after we’re arrested, we are forced to borrow money at high interest rates from someone else,” she said.

Another worker named Khin Swe Oo, who is originally from Moulmein in central Burma, said police would do anything to arrest migrants because they are afforded little protection under Thai laws—even those in possession of the documents required to stay in the country.

“They use [planted] drugs to make a case for arresting us as well, just to get money from us. They often ask for 20,000-30,000 baht (U.S. $625-940),” Khin Swe Oo said.

“Some criminals take our passports … and extort money from us to get our papers back. These criminals are also police officers. They are the same and act as it suits them,” she said.

“We do the necessary paperwork to obtain a legal residence permit, but the police and the Thais know they can bully us and extort money from us … We are not safe here, even though we have our proper papers and passports.”

And a third female migrant, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said that she and many of her compatriots simply wanted to return to Burma.

“I just want to go home. Can I get a good job there? We are so repressed at our workplaces, the way they treat us.”

Landmark trip

Aung San Suu Kyi arrived in Thailand on Tuesday for a six-day official visit—her first abroad since being released in November 2010 from nearly 15 years of house arrest over the past two decades.

On Saturday, the parliamentarian is expected to travel north near the Thai-Burma border to visit the Mae La refugee camp for those displaced by ethnic fighting in Burma’s borderlands.

Some 150,000 refugees from Burma, mostly ethnic Karen, currently live in camps near the border in Thailand, pushed out by decades of fighting with the Burmese government.

Aung San Suu Kyi has said that ending ethnic conflict would be one of her top priorities in office and has called for a “second Panglong Conference” like the one her father, Burmese independence leader General Aung San, negotiated with ethnic minority groups in 1947.

In nearby Mae Sot, she will meet with leaders from six ethnic groups before returning to Burma on Sunday.

Suu Kyi tells migrant workers: ‘I will never forget you’

Jubilant Burmese migrant workers greeted Aung San Suu Kyi on Wednesday morning, who told them she is working to make it possible for them to return home.

Thousands of local people and migrant workers packed a narrow street in Samut Sakhon near Bangkok to hear her speak during her first foreign trip in 24 years.

Standing on the balcony of the Library and Office of the Migrant Worker Rights Network building, she told the migrant workers that she came to Thailand to learn about their conditions first hand.

Suu Kyi invited the representatives of 30 migrant workers to a discussion on worker’s challenges in Thailand. Migrant workers discussed problems of access to accident compensation and the workmen’s compensation fund, exploitation by job brokers in the Nationality Verification (NV) process, human trafficking problems and access to education for migrant workers’s children in Thailand.

They also said many workers underwent the NV process, but they were not eligible to take part in the social security system. Migrant workers also told Suu Kyi about the plight of crime victims who endure rape and robbery.

Suu Kyi acknowledged the issues and urged migrant workers in Thailand to seek their rights and to shoulder that responsibility. She said migrants should unite and give mutual support, and that she would talk to the governments of the two countries to seek solutions to such problems.

“I will never forget you, and I will discuss your troubles with the Thai government to help improve your well-being,” the National League for Democracy Party leader said. “I ask you to be patient and please work to your full potential as assigned by your employers. I'll try to develop our country so you can come back home and apply your skills and knowledge and make our country prosper."

Suu Kyi, who will speak to the World Economic Forum on Friday in Bangkok, will meet with Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and opposition leader Abhisit Vejjajiva, the former prime minister.

She told a crowd of thousands, “Don't feel down, or weak. History is always changing.”

“Today, I will make you one promise: I will try my best for you,” she said.

After speaking to the crowd, the Nobel Peace Prize winner met with migrant workers who told her they faced mistreatment from employers but lack knowledge of their rights and have no legal means to settle disputes.

Thailand hosts around 2.5 million Burmese who have fled here to work low-skilled jobs as domestic servants or in manual labor industries like fisheries and the garment sector.

Andy Hall, a researcher at the Institute for Population and Social Research at Thailand's Mahidol University, said up to a million of them are undocumented, and they make up between 5 and 10 percent of the Thai work force, contributing as much as 7 percent of the nation's GDP.

Many are exploited and paid reduced wages, he said. Some have been trafficked; some have had their passports confiscated by employers. Hall said they were nevertheless “the lifeblood of a lot of the Myanmar economy, sending home money to support families who don't have enough money to eat.”

“They have no voice, they can never speak up or stand up,” Hall said. “So for Aung San Suu Kyi to visit is like a dream come true, someone who finally may be able to bring attention to their suffering.”

About 30 km southwest of Bangkok, Samut Sakhon is home to tens of thousands of Burmese migrants, documented and undocumented, who are the primary labor force in Thailand's fisheries industry.

Since becoming a Member of Parliament, this is Suu Kyi first trip abroad after spending 15 of the last 24 years under house arrest.

Following her trip to Bangkok, she is scheduled to visit Norway, Britain, Ireland and France, according to a NLD spokespersons. First, she will return to Burma before heading to Oslo, Norway, where she will receive her long-delayed Nobel Peace Prize. 

Suu Kyi to meet Burmese migrants in Thailand

During her visit to Thailand to attend the World Economic Forum starting on Wednesday, Aung San Suu Kyi will visit Burmese migrants to see working and living conditions and visit a local National Verification Center, according to migrant worker advocates.

She is scheduled to visit the National Verification Center in the Aur Arthon Housing Project in Thajin, Samut Sakhon Province, tour a shrimp market and meet Burmese migrant workers and their families at a migrant learning center.

Suu Kyi is expected to garner vast media attention at the World Economic Forum, which may have been a factor in causing Burmese President Thein Sein to cancel his attendance at the three-day event. He said he would come in Thailand soon at a later date.

The Burmese Minister of Energy U Than Htay will officially represent the government at the gathering.

An aide to Suu Kyi told The Bangkok Post that she would visit Samut Sakhon's Mahachai District, which is home to hundreds of thousands of Burmese migrant workers.

The Nobel laureate may also visit a refugee camp in Tha Song Yang District in Tak province, opposite Myawaddy, Burma, and she may visit the Mae Tao clinic, and meet a group of exiled activists based in the province, said the newspaper. That visit has been tentatively arranged for Saturday.

Suu Kyi's talks with exiled dissidents who have worked closely with democracy forces inside Burma play a large role in determining whether the country’s reconciliation efforts have the support of the exiled population.

On Tuesday, the exiled Karen Women’s Organization (KWO) released an open letter to Suu Kyi, saying the Burmese refugee community in Thailand is “currently living with a great deal of uncertainty and worry due to the changing position of international communities regarding continuing support here and possible repatriation during these fragile peace negotiations.”

Part of KWO's focus is to conduct consultation with communities on the issue of return to Burma.

“Like you, we believe women have an important role in moving these issues forward as we have always had a vital role in maintaining and sustaining our community,” said the statement.

The KWO works in all seven Karen refugee camps and in Karen State.

“We have more than 49,000 Karen women who are members of our organization,” the statement said. “We provide services to our community like special education, safe houses for women who are victims of gender based violence, nursery schools, along with leadership development and women’s direct involvement in the peace talks.” 

ထိုင္း - ျမန္မာနယ္စပ္

ထိုင္း - ျမန္မာနယ္စပ္ မဲေဆာက္ၿမိဳ႕မွ ဘန္ေကာက္သို႔ အလုပ္ရမည္ဟု ေခၚေဆာင္လာကာ ေရာင္းစား ခံခဲ့ရေသာ လူ ၁၀၀ ေက်ာ္ထဲမွ ကိုေက်ာ္ဇံႏွင့္ ကိုေဇာ္ထြန္းအား ဘတ္ေငြ ၁၁၅၀၀ စီျဖင့္ မၾကာေသးမီက ျပန္လည္ ေရြးယူခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သတင္းရရွိသည္။

ေရာင္းစားခံထားရသူမ်ား လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးႏွင့္ လူေမွာင္ခို ကုန္ကူးသူမ်ားကို ဖမ္းဆီး ေဖာ္ထုတ္ႏိုင္ေရးအတြက္ အကူအညီေပးေနသည့္ မဲေဆာက္အေျခစိုက္ People Volunteer’s Association (PVA) အဖြဲ႕က ယင္းလူငယ္ ၂ ဦးကို ျပန္လည္ ေရြးထုတ္ႏိုင္ခဲ့ျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္။

အဆိုပါ လူငယ္ ၂ ဦးသည္ ပင္လယ္ထဲတြင္ ၁၃ ရက္ခန္႔ ငါးဖမ္းေနခဲ့ရေၾကာင္း၊ ေဆြမ်ိဳးမ်ားက ပိုက္ဆံႏွင့္ ေရြးထုတ္၍ ရလွ်င္ ေရြးထုတ္ခ်င္သည္ဟု ေျပာသျဖင့္ PVA ႏွင့္ ပူးေပါင္း ေဆာင္ရြက္ေနသူ ကိုခိုင္မင္းထြန္းက သြားေရာက္ ေရြးထုတ္ ေပးခဲ့ေၾကာင္း PVA အဖြဲ ့မွ ဗဟိုေကာ္မတီ၀င္ ၁ ကိုသိန္းဆန္းက ေျပာသည္။

ကိုခိုင္မင္းထြန္းက “ဒီနယ္ေျမက လူေမွာင္ခုိမႈေတြ၊ လူေရာင္းစားမႈေတြ အရမ္း မ်ားေတာ့ အခုလို သြားေရြးရတာ သိပ္ အႏၱရာယ္ႀကီးတယ္။ အေၾကာင္းမညီညြတ္ရင္ ကိုယ္ပါ အစေပ်ာက္ သြားႏိုင္တယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ လူသားခ်င္း ေက်းကၽြန္လို ေရာင္းစားခံထားရတဲ့ သူေတြအတြက္ က်ေနာ္ အရဲစြန္႔လုပ္ေပးခဲ့တာ” ဟု ဆုိသည္။

ေရြးထုတ္ လာခဲ့သည့္ ကိုေက်ာ္ဇံမွာ အသက္ ၂၄ ႏွစ္ ရွိၿပီး ကိုေဇာ္ထြန္းမွာ အသက္ ၁၉ ႏွစ္ ျဖစ္သည္။ ႏွစ္ဦးစလံုး ရခိုင္ျပည္နယ္ ေပါက္ေတာၿမိဳ႕နယ္မွ ျဖစ္ၾကသည္။

၎တို႔သည္ ေမလ ၆ ရက္ေန႔မွ စတင္ကာ ျမ၀တီ နယ္ျခားေစာင့္တပ္ အမွတ္ ၁၄ ဂိတ္မွ ထြက္လာခဲ့ၾကၿပီး မဲေဆာက္ ဘက္ျခမ္းမွတဆင့္ ေတာလမ္းခရီးကို ေလွ်ာက္ခဲ့ၾကရေၾကာင္း၊ ေမ ၁၃ ရက္ေန႔တြင္ ထိုင္းႏုိင္ငံ ခၽြန္ဘူရီခရိုင္ အေခ်ာင္ၿမိဳ႕ ေ၀လာစိန္ တံတားတြင္ ရွိေသာ ငါးဖမ္းေလွဆိပ္သို႔ ေရာက္ရွိခဲ့ေၾကာင္း၊ ထိုအရပ္သို႔ေရာက္မွ ၎တို႔ ေရာင္းစားခံခဲ့ရ သည္ကို သိရေၾကာင္း ကိုေက်ာ္ဇံက ေျပာသည္။

ကိုေက်ာ္ဇံအား ပြဲစားက မဟာခ်ိဳင္အရပ္ရွိ ပုစြန္ေခါင္းခ်ိဳး စက္ရံုတြင္လုပ္ရမည္ဟု ေျပာကာ ေခၚခဲ့ျခင္း ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း၊ သို႔ရာတြင္ မဟာခ်ိဳင္ေဒသမဟုတ္ဘဲ စက္ရံုတြင္လည္း မလုပ္ရေၾကာင္း သူက ဆိုသည္။

“အနီးအနားက မြန္တေယာက္ကို ေမးၾကည့္ေတာ့မွ သူက မင္းတို႔ကို ပြဲစားက ဘတ္ ၁ ေသာင္းနဲ႔ အျပတ္ ေရာင္းထား ခဲ့ၿပီလို႔ ေျပာတယ္။ အဲဒီေတာ့မွ အေရာင္းစား ခံလိုက္ရၿပီဆိုတာကို သိလိုက္ရတယ္။ ကိုယ့္ လူမ်ိဳးအခ်င္းခ်င္း တိရစာၦန္တေကာင္ကို ေရာင္းသလို၊ ကၽြန္ကို ေရာင္းသလို ေရာင္းစား ခံလိုက္ရတာ အရမ္းခံျပင္းတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ အဲဒီအခ်ိန္မွာ ဘာမွ မတတ္ႏိုင္ေတာ့ဘူး” ဟု ၎က ဆက္ေျပာသည္။

ပြဲစားသည္ တျခားသူမ်ားအား ဘန္ေကာက္ရွိ ငါးေသတၱာစက္ရံု၊ နာနတ္သီးစက္ရံုႏွင့္ ပန္းရံလုပ္ငန္းမ်ားတြင္ အလုပ္အကိုင္ ရမည္၊ လက္ငင္းေငြေပးစရာမလုိ၊ အလုပ္သမား လက္မွတ္လည္း လုပ္ေပးမည္၊ ယာယီႏုိင္ငံကူးလက္မွတ္လည္း လုပ္ေပးမည္၊ လမ္းစရိတ္ ဘတ္ ၁၀၀၀၀ က်မည္း၊ အရစ္က် ဆပ္ရမည္၊ လစာ တလလွ်င္ ဘတ္ ၈၀၀၀ ရမည္ စသျဖင့္ မက္လံုးမ်ားေပးကာ ေခၚလာခဲ့ျခင္း ျဖစ္သည္။

လူဆြယ္ေပးေသာ ပြဲစားမွာ အသက္ ၂၀ ေက်ာ္အရြယ္ရွိ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံသား မင္းမင္း ဆိုသူျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း၊ မင္းမင္းက ျမ၀တီရွိ လူပြဲစား မေမာ္ (ခ) ေဒၚစန္းစန္းေမာ္ထံသို႔ ပို႔ေပးေၾကာင္း ျပန္ေရြးထုတ္ခံခဲ့ရသူ ကိုေဇာ္ထြန္းက ေျပာျပသည္။

“က်ေနာ္တို႔ကို မဲေဆာက္ကေန ျမ၀တီမွာရွိတဲ့ မေမာ္ဆီကို မင္းမင္းက ပို႔ေပးတယ္။ သူက ပြဲခယူၿပီး က်ေနာ္တို႔ကို လႊဲေပးလိုက္တာ။ အဲဒီ မေမာ္က ျမ၀တီဘက္ကမ္းမွာရွိတဲ့ အမွတ္ ၁၄ နယ္ျခားေစာင့္တပ္ ၀န္းထဲမွာေနတာ။ က်ေနာ္တို႔ အဲဒီမွာ တညအိပ္ခဲ့ရတယ္” ဟု သူက ဆိုသည္။

မဲေဆာက္မွ ဘန္ေကာက္သို႔ လူတင္ပို႔ေသာ ကယ္ရီ (ပြဲစား) မ်ားစြာ ရွိၿပီး ျမန္မာ ေရႊ႕ေျပာင္း အလုပ္သမားမ်ားသည္ နယ္စပ္အသီးသီးမွ ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံအတြင္းပိုင္းသို႔ ကယ္ရီမ်ားျဖင့္ သြားလာၾကရေၾကာင္း၊ ထိုကယ္ရီမ်ားထဲတြင္ လူေမွာင္ခို ကုန္ကူး သူမ်ားလည္း ပါရွိေၾကာင္း PVA အဖြဲ ့မွ ကိုသိန္းဆန္းက ဆိုသည္။

“ကယ္ရီေတြကေတာ့ ဒီမွာ အမ်ားႀကီးပဲ။ ဒီလို လူေမွာင္ခို ကုန္ကူးတဲ့အဖြဲ႔ေတြက သံုး၊ ေလးဖြဲ႕ေလာက္ေတာ့ ရွိႏိုင္မယ္ ထင္တယ္။ က်ေနာ္တို႔ ေျခရာခံ မိေနတာကေတာ့ မေမာ္တို႔အဖြဲ႔ပဲ။ သူတို႔အထဲက မင္းမင္းဆိုတဲ့သူကို က်ေနာ္တို႔ ထိန္းသိမ္းထားတယ္။ မေမာ္က နယ္ျခားေစာင့္တပ္ကို အကာအကြယ္ယူၿပီး လႈပ္ရွားတယ္။ ထိုင္းဘက္ကို မကူးဘူး” ဟု ကိုသိန္းဆန္းက ဆိုသည္။

အေခ်ာင္ၿမိဳ႕ ေ၀လာစိန္ ေလွဆိပ္တြင္ ငါးဖမ္းေလွ ေထာင္ႏွင့္ခ်ီ ရွိႏိုင္ေၾကာင္းႏွင့္ ယင္းေလွမ်ားတြင္ အေရာင္းစား ခံထားရသူ မ်ားစြာရွိေၾကာင္းလည္း ကိုေက်ာ္ဇံက ေျပာသည္။

ကိုေက်ာ္ဇံတို႔ ၁၃ ရက္ၾကာ လိုက္ခဲ့ရေသာ ေလွနံပါတ္ ၁၁ တြင္ ေလွသား ၁၂ ဦး ရွိရာ ၁၀ ဦးမွာ ေရာင္းစား ခံထားရသည့္ ျမန္မာမ်ား ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း၊ က်န္ ၂ ဦးမွာ ပဲ့နင္း ထုိ္င္းလူမ်ိဳးႏွင့္ ေရသွ်ဴး (ငါးရႏုိင္မရႏုိင္ ၾကည့္ေပးရသူ ေရကၽြမ္းက်င္) မြန္တိုင္းရင္းသား တဦးျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း၊ ၎မွာ သူေဌး၏ လူယံုလည္း ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း သိရသည္။

လူပြဲစားမ်ားက လူတဦးလွ်င္ ဘတ္တေသာင္းျဖင့္ ေရာင္းစားခဲ့ၿပီး အေရာင္းစားခံရသူက ဘတ္ ၂၀၀၀၀ အထိ ျပန္ဆပ္ ႏုိင္မွ လြတ္ေျမာက္ႏုိင္မည္ ျဖစ္သည္။ အေရာင္းစား ခံရသူသည္ တလလွ်င္ ပ်မ္းမွ် ဘတ္ ၃၀၀၀ ခန္႔ ရမည္ဟု သတ္မွတ္ ထားေသာ္လည္း မည္သည့္ လစာမွ် မရဘဲ ၇ လခန္႔ အလုပ္လုပ္ေပး ၾကရသည္။

အကယ္၍ ေလွမွ ထြက္ေျပးရန္ႀကိဳးစားပါက ျပင္းထန္စြာ ရိုက္ႏွက္ခံရေၾကာင္း၊ ေလွ သူေဌးထံမွ ထြက္ေျပးစဥ္ ရဲ မိ၍ ျပန္လာအပ္ပါက မူလသတ္မွတ္ေစ်းထက္ ၂ ဆ ျပန္ဆပ္ရေၾကာင္း ကိုေဇာ္ထြန္းက ေျပာသည္။

“က်ေနာ္တို႔ ေရွ႕မွာပဲ ထြက္ေျပးတဲ့သူကို အုပ္နဲ႔ ၀ိုင္းရိုက္တာ ျမင္မေကာင္းဘူး။ ၿပီးေတာ့ က်ေနာ္တို႔ ေနခဲ့တဲ့ ေလွေပၚမွာ ေက်ာက္ျဖဴက ကိုစိုးျမင့္ထြန္းနဲ႔ ကိုထြန္းထြန္း၀င္း ဆိုတဲ့ လူ ၂ ေယာက္ကိုေတြ႔ခဲ့တယ္။ သူတို႔ ထြက္ေျပးလို႔ ရဲက ဖမ္းမိၿပီး သူေဌးကို ဘတ္ ၅၀၀၀ နဲ႔ ျပန္လာ ေရာင္းသြားတယ္။ အခု သူတို႔ လုပ္ေပးရမယ့္ လက္က်န္ ၃ လ ျပည့္သြားေပမယ့္ မလြတ္ေသးဘူး။ ေနာက္ထပ္ ၃ လ ထပ္လိုက္ ေပးရဦးမယ္လို႔ ေျပာတယ္” ဟု သူက ရွင္းျပသည္။

ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံ အတြင္းတြင္ ယခုကဲ့သို႔ ေရာင္းစား ခံထားရေသာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသား ေျမာက္မ်ားစြာရွိေနၿပီး ယခု ေမလ အတြင္းတြင္ပင္ ျမ၀တီၿမိဳ႕မွ မေမာ္တို႔အဖြဲ ့ေရာင္းစားလိုက္သူမ်ားမွာ ရာႏွင့္ ခ်ီရွိသည္ဟု PAV အဖြဲ႕က ေျပာသည္။ 

ယင္းအထဲမွ အမ်ိဳးသားမ်ားကို ငါးဖမ္းေလွသို ့ ေရာင္းစားၿပီး အမ်ိဳးသမီးမ်ားမွာမူ ယခုအခ်ိန္အထိ မည္သည့္ေနရာတြင္ ေရာက္ေနေၾကာင္း အတိအက် မသိရဟု ကုိသိန္းဆန္းက ဆိုသည္။

ယခုကဲ့သို႔ လူမ်ား အစုလိုက္ အၿပံဳလိုက္ ေရာင္းစား ခံေနရျခင္းမွာ ျမန္မာအလုပ္သမားမ်ား အေနျဖင့္ ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံအတြင္းသို႔ တရား၀င္ လာေရာက္ႏိုင္ျခင္း မရွိဘဲ ပြဲစားမ်ား၊ လူေမွာင္ခုိ ကုန္ကူးသူမ်ားႏွင့္ သြားလာေနရျခင္းေၾကာင့္ ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း၊ ျမန္မာႏွင့္ ထိုင္း ႏွစ္ႏိုင္ငံအစိုးရမ်ား၏ အလုပ္သမား ေပၚလစီ အားနည္းခ်က္ေၾကာင့္ ျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း၊ ထို႔အျပင္ ေဒသခံ အာဏာပိုင္ မ်ားမွာလည္း အလုပ္ရွင္မ်ား၏ အက်ိဳးစီးပြားကိုသာ ၾကည့္သျဖင့္ ေျဖရွင္းရခက္ေၾကာင္း လူေမွာင္ခိုမႈ၊ လူေရာင္းစား ခံရမႈ အပါအ၀င္ ျမန္မာ ေရႊ႕ေျပာင္းအလုပ္သမားမ်ား အေရးကို ေဆာင္ရြက္ေပးေနသည့္ Thai Action Committee for Democracy in Burma (TACDB) မွ လက္ေထာက္ ဒါရိုက္တာ ဦးျမင့္ေ၀ကေျပာသည္။

၎က “ခၽြန္ဘူရီ အေခ်ာင္ဘက္မွာ အခုလို အမႈမ်ိဳး ခဏခဏ ျဖစ္ေနတယ္။ ေဒသခံ အာဏာပိုင္ေတြကလည္း လုပ္ငန္းရွင္ေတြရဲ႕ အက်ိဳးစီးပြားကိုပဲ ဦးစားေပးၾကည့္ေနေတာ့ ေျဖရွင္းရတာ မလြယ္ဘူး။ ဒီအမႈ ၁၀ မႈမွာ ၁ မႈကို ဖမ္းဆီးဖို႔က မလြယ္လွဘူး” ဟု ဆိုသည္။
ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံအတြင္းတြင္ လာေရာက္အလုပ္လုပ္ေနၾကေသာ ေရႊ႕ေျပာင္းျမန္မာ အလုပ္သမားမ်ားမွာ အနည္းဆံုး ၂ သန္းမွ ၄ သန္း ၀န္းက်င္ခန္႔ရွိေၾကာင္း အလုပ္သမားအဖြဲ ့မ်ားက ခန္႔မွန္းၾကသည္။

Thai, Burmese bank open remittance service

Asian Green Development Bank and Thailand’s Kasikorn Bank signed an agreement on 8 May to create a remittance service between the two countries.

On Tuesday, AGDB’s deputy-chairman Zaw Min and the K-Bank’s Senior Executive Vice President Somkid Jiranuntarat signed an agreement in Bangkok at Kasikorn’s headquarters in front of officials from the Burmese embassy and the World Bank.

“Migrants sending their hard-earn cash from Thailand back to their homes via unofficial money transfer services often end up losing their money so based on this consideration, we sought approval from the World Bank to run an official remittance service,” said an official from K-Bank.

The exchange rate will be based on daily EU currency rates. The bank said it will offer special discount services to migrant workers and is looking to hire Burmese staff at select branches.
K-Bank said they aim to have the service up and running in June. The first bank to host the service will be in Mahachai district near Bangkok, where a large Burmese community is located.

Kasikorn is the first bank to use Burmese language interface with their ATM machines at more than 20 locations in Thailand.

Asia Green Development Bank is owned by the powerful businessman Tay Za, whom Forbes has described as Burma’s first billionaire and who has benefited from close relations with top-level government officials.

Burmese ‘Slaves’ Rescued from Thai Fishing Boat

Twenty Burmese migrants were rescued when the fishing boat they were forced to work on was raided by the Thai authorities and human rights activists in Chonburi Province, south of Bangkok.

Kyaw Thaung, an spokesperson for the Burmese Association in Thailand (BAT) who was involved in the raid, said that the group was rescued at 3 am on Friday following a tip from one of the victims.

Some of those rescued had been forced to work as “slaves” on the fishing boat for over one year without being paid, he told The Irrawaddy on Monday.

Four people were arrested on the boat during the raid and another two Burmese men were detained later in Bangkok after the authorities followed up on information provided by the victims. Two ethnic Mon women from Burma were among the traffickers arrested on the boat, it has been claimed.

The victims apparently crossed over the Thai-Burmese border near Mae Sot with the assistance of brokers and were then handed to employment brokers in Thailand who arranged for them to join the fishing boat.

Among the 20 were three victims aged just 16 years old and another of around 40 years of age. Many were ethnic Burmese from Pegu Division, while others were ethnic Karen.
“They had to stay like animals, wearing dirty clothes and some people only had one set of clothes. They were locked up the whole time and watched by two guards,” said Kyaw Thaung.

Six of the victims have been detained in Nonthaburi Province with the rest staying at an anti-human trafficking office in Bangkok. Each may have to wait for around three to four months for the Thai courts to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators, and they will then be deported back to Burma.

Human trafficking is very prevalent in southern Thailand where there is a large fishing industry. Many Burmese migrants seek work in the area and end up being trafficked to fishing boats and forced to work for many months at sea for little or no pay.

According to a US report, the Thai government “reported 18 convictions in trafficking-related cases in 2010—an increase from eight known convictions during the previous year. As of May 2011, only five of the 18 convictions reported by the government could be confirmed as trafficking offenses.”

Burma May Send 200,000 Workers to Thailand

More than 200,000 workers from Burma could be flown into Bangkok to be employed in Thai factories under a direct state-to-state agreement, according to a Thai Labor Ministry spokesman.

The plan is designed to address a labor shortage in Thailand and would involved available workers being flown directly to the capital. Burma has an estimated three million unemployed and many millions more on extremely low incomes.

The announcement was made at a joint Bangkok press conference on Thursday featuring representatives of both the Thai and Burmese labor ministries. The move would have to be ratified at a bilateral meeting in Burma next month.

Proposals to safeguard workers rights include having contracts that could be revoked or ended after six months on mutual consent if Thai bosses abuse their Burmese workers physically, the employer dies or the business finishes, or the employer violates the Thai Lab our Law.

Meanwhile, five new centers enabling Burmese migrant workers to better-formalize their status in Thailand open on Friday.

Brandishing a new sample purple-covered machine-readable passport, which he says will be issued at the five additional nationality verification centers, Burmese Deputy Minister for Labor Myint Thein told assembled media that the Thai government finally agreed to allow the centers to open after a four-month delay.

The five new centers―in Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Samut Sakhon, Samut Parakarn and Surat Thani―were originally due to begin operations on Jan. 1 and will bring the number of locations up to nine in total.

“We hope that all undocumented workers from Myanmar in Thailand can become documented, so they can escape exploitation,” Myint Thein said during a rare foreign press conference given by a Burmese official.

It remains unclear why Thailand so quickly changed tack during Myint Thein’s visit, facilitating the opening of the verification centers within 24 hours after a four-month delay.
The deputy minister added that the Thai authorities would reduce the visa fee for Burmese migrants from 2,000 to 500 baht, and said that the Thais agreed to allow children and dependents of migrants to be issued with a new certificate of identity.

The deputy minister’s visit comes as Burmese and Cambodian migrant workers protest exploitation and discrimination at two factories in Thailand, one of which is a supplier to Walmart, thought to be the world’s biggest retailer. Walmart’s 2011 net sales of US $419 billion are slightly above the total GDP of oil-rich Norway, ranked 23rd in the world at $414 billion.

Some of the workers at the Phattana seafood plant in Songkla and Vita food factory in Kanchanaburi are undocumented, leaving them vulnerable to abuses by the factory management. For those with papers, it was alleged that Phatthana illegally confiscated the passports of as many as 2,000 migrant workers, leaving them in a state of debt bondage, unable to leave the country and barely able to survive. Confiscation of documents is a violation of Thai law and is a breach of Walmart’s own internal supplier standards, say activists.

The protests started when factory owners withheld food allowances and changed payment terms, apparently a reaction to a new minimum wage policy enacted by the Thai Government.

Some of the workers were trafficked into Thailand from Cambodia and Burma. Typically, undocumented Burmese come to Thailand via a network of Burmese brokers and Thai employers and police.

According to activists working on the Vita and Phattana cases, “all of them are in debt because they had to pay for transportation to come to Thailand that cost 15,000 – 20,000 baht [$500-670] per person”.

Vita Food Factory in Kanchanaburi employs 7,000 people, mostly foreign migrants. Of those, undocumented workers mostly came from Burma through the brokers. Those that have acquired work permits have had to pay brokers 5,500 baht, well above the official 3,800 baht fee.

A letter sent to Walmart by activists and seen by The Irrawaddy told the retail multinational that, “workers at both factories appear to be facing serious violations of international human rights standards, local laws and Walmart’s Standards for Suppliers,” and called on the company to help “end to this treatment of workers and do more to ensure that this treatment is not occurring in other supplier factories.”

The missive appeared to have an impact, as by Thursday afternoon Phattana had returned all confiscated passports to the migrants.

Responding to a question from The Irrawaddy, Myint Thein said that the Burmese government had not yet raised the issue with Walmart, but said that they could do so if other avenues do not resolve the stand-off, after the deputy minister met today with whom he termed “the chair” of the seafood factory in Songkla.

Migrant worker activist Andy Hall said that “it is noticeable that for the first time in two decades, the Myanmar authorities have reacted quickly to a migrant worker problem in Thailand.”

Saying that this will put pressure on the Thai government to address long-standing abuses of migrant workers in Thailand, he cautioned that “at the same time you cannot pass the buck to Thailand. The brokers who brought the workers to Phattana in Songkla operate from Myanmar.”