Cambodian, Vietnamese workers leave Thailand on fear of arrest

BANGKOK, June 15 (TNA) - Cambodian and Vietnamese workers continued to leave Thailand on Sunday for fear of being arrested by authorities following concern over an order recently issued on migrant workers by the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO). Hectic activity marked the Thailand-Lao PDR border in Nakhon Phanom province, with workers flooding across the third Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge over the Mekong River early Sunday. Nearly 1,000 Vietnamese had left Thailand on a daily basis since the beginning of June via the checkpoint. Nakhon Phanom’s immigration chief Police Colonel Pansak Kadee said the migrant workers had not fully understood the NCPO’s order, which only aimed to simplify arrangements to make legalizing their immigration status easier. He said previously, a Vietnamese holding a tourist passport could stay in Thailand for 30 days. They would leave the kingdom by crossing over the border for only one night and would then be allowed to apply for new visas at border processing offices. However, there had been cases where authorities refused to renew their documents due to an array of reasons, including the too little of amount of time that they had spent on the other side of the border. (TNA)