Informal migration for labor

Three additional labour attachés will be assigned to Myanmar’s embassy in Thailand next year, the labour minister announced on December 18. More labour officers are being assigned in order to handle the high volume of cases stemming from the large number of Myanmar migrants working there, ...

Myanmar police have presented six demands to their Thai counterparts, calling for a crackdown on corrupt and abusive Thai officials who prey on Myanmar workers in Thailand. The Myanmar officials accused Thai officials of demanding money from the Myanmar workers and illegally confiscating their documents. The ...

ASEAN Dialogue partners are urging Southeast Asian countries to pick up the slack in providing better access to employment for its skilled workers in an effort to achieve the target of free flowing labor in the region. Efforts to enhance skilled labor mobility in ASEAN ...

A World Bank investigation into a tea plantation project in India that it jointly finances with tea giant Tata Global Beverages has found that it has failed to tackle alleged abuses of impoverished workers, the group said on November 9. The International Finance Corporation—a member ...

Foreign workers in breach of a law awaiting passage could face penalties, immigration officials say. The labour ministry is finalising a draft law for submission to the Office of the President that seeks to more tightly regulate foreign workers in the country. The draft incorporates ...

A forced labour case involving 14 Myanmar workers and a giant poultry exporter in Thailand’s Lopburi province went unresolved in court on October 31. Unsatisfied with the 1.7 million Thai baht in compensation awarded by the Lopburi Labour Protection and Welfare Office against the poultry farm ...

Young people are leaving the Mekong Delta, Vietnam’s rice bowl, while the region’s economic growth is declining. These issues were discussed at the conference about socio-economic development of the Mekong Delta 30 years after the economic reforms implemented in 1986 held by Vietnam Academy of Social ...

Myanmar’s preeminent trade union confederation has called on the government to take action to protect migrant workers from exploitation and unfair treatment abroad. Daw Htwe Htwe Thein, a director of the Confederation of Trade Unions of Myanmar, called for stronger regulation of employment agents who recruit ...

Tun Tun Win and his coworkers from Burma thought life was fine at the Thammakaset chicken farm in central Thailand, where they reared hundreds of thousands of birds for export to the European Union. The migrants clocked 20 hours a day for 40 days straight, shoveling ...

The Ministry of Labour on September 12 reminded an estimated 380,000 Cambodian migrant workers in Thailand who hold temporary work permits – also known as pink cards – to apply for more permanent documents when registration opens online later this month. In its letter, the ministry reminded ...