Population
Migration
KOICA extends support for immigration capacity development
The Korea International Cooperation Agency will provide grant aid of US$8.6 million to support Laos’s immigration capacity development project. The aid will fund the project to improve systems and institutional capacity building for the Immigration Department at the Ministry of Public Security from 2017 to ...
Phuket hospitals rejecting migrant workers’ insurance
Some women are forced to abandon their babies at hospitals as they’re being denied universal health coverage. Financial difficulties in the healthcare system is leading to pregnant migrant workers only in Phuket province being denied access to Universal Coverage health insurance scheme when they deliver babies. Usually ...
Workers to get Thai legal permits
In coordination with Thai officials, Cambodia’s Labor Ministry has set up a new process to help migrant workers in Thailand receive passports, travel cards or Overseas Cambodian Worker Cards. For many Cambodians it will end a gray area in which they have been issued with what ...
Minister plans railway for workers
The Labor Ministry is considering constructing a railway line connecting Phnom Penh and select provinces to special economic zones or industrial areas in response to the high number of road accidents involving commuting workers. Speaking at the 2016 Annual Report and Direction for 2017 of the ...
Parents of trafficking victims testify in Thailand
Chab Sanna, 67, on January 26 told a courtroom how her three sons had been lured from their Svay Rieng province home in search of work abroad only to be trafficked into a life of near-slavery on a Thai fishing vessel. It’s an all-too-familiar tale, though ...
Cambodian migrants kin to testify in trafficking case
Parents of Cambodian human trafficking victims who were rescued from fishing boats in the southern border province of Ranong have travelled to Thailand to testify for their children in court. “I just want to see [the lawsuit] end quickly so my son can come back ...
Flood victims in South resort to living on rafts
In the face of weeks-long flooding, many victims in Surat Thani province have chosen to live on rafts so that they can stay close to their flooded houses. Although rain stopped pouring down in the Sap Tawee area of Surat Thani’s Ban Na Doem district ...
Nickel and Dimed on frog mountain
Our motorbikes crossed flimsy bamboo bridges in western Sagaing Division, a landscape still showing the devastation of 2015’s floods. Shifting gears up a twisting, muddy hill trail took us over the border to Chin State. There, several villages are tucked into the forested slopes of ...
Poipet checkpoint to be upgraded, enlarged
The government has decided to build a new immigration office at the Poipet International Border Checkpoint at a cost of more than $2 million. General Sok Phal, the director general of the Interior Ministry’s immigration department, told reporters on Sunday after an annual meeting with ...
Laos a top source of visitors to Thailand
More and more Lao people are travelling overseas, particularly to Thailand and other ASEAN countries, thanks to Laos’ continuing economic growth which has generated increasing wealth. Director General of the Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism’s Tourism Marketing Department, Mr Saly Phimphinith, told Vientiane Times ...