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Bangkok Post - Jan 08,
2000
Saturday, January 8 12:39 AM SGT
Thai Factories Suffer Losses On Deported Foreign WorkersMAE SOT, Thailand (AP)--Thai factory owners facing big losses after the
deportation of Myanmar migrant workers appealed to the government Friday for
permission to rehire them to plug a chronic labor shortage.
Paniti Tanpati, chairman of the chamber of commerce in the northwestern Tak province, bordering Myanmar, said that factories in the main provincial town of Mae Sot urgently needed 24,000 laborers. Paniti estimated factories have suffered 2 billion baht ($1=THB37.273) in losses for not meeting delivery obligations since Nov., when police launched a nationwide crackdown on the estimated one million illegal migrant laborers in Thailand from Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar, also known as Burma. The labor shortage has forced thirty factories in the district to close and most others to operate at reduced capacity. The plants, mostly making textiles, need 30,000 workers to operate at full capacity, but had been able to recruit only 6,000 Thais. Tanpati made his appeal to a visiting high-ranking government official, Vudhi Sukosol, on behalf of local farm owners and the 70 plants that relied on cheap Myanmar labor in Mae Sot, 370 kilometers (230 miles) northwest of Bangkok. The crackdown on the immigrants was meant to free up jobs for Thai workers because of high unemployment from two years of recession, but most Thais spurn the manual jobs done by migrants from Myanmar for as little as THB40 per day. Mae Sot immigration police have deported 30,000 Myanmar citizens over the past two months. Some 4,000 are believed to have sneaked back. Paniti appealed for factories to be allowed to hire Myanmar workers who cross the border legally in the morning and leave from Thailand at night. Vudhi said he would report the problem to the presidential cabinet. |