Thailand creates proper understanding on migrant worker issues

BANGKOK, June 18 (TNA) - Many parties in Thailand are hurriedly creating proper understanding with local employers and migrant workers on labor regulations in a bid to dismiss a rumour and the migrant workers' misunderstanding that Thai authorities are about to round them up. Thai police and soldiers made announcements and handed out leaflets to Cambodian workers at the Rong Klua Market in Aranyaprathet District of Sa Kaeo Province in the East, bordering Cambodia, on Wednesday. The Thai security authorities ruled out the possibility of rounding up legal migrant workers. However, hundreds of Cambodian workers continued leaving the border Thai province for their home country. Thai authorities and vendors at the Rong Klua Market, meanwhile, tried to create a friendly atmosphere with Cambodians by staging concerts, handing out food and drinking water and deploying more than 10 trucks to carry them to Cambodian Poipet Town across the border, resulting in some Cambodian workers' saying they would be back. From June 1-17, 2014, more than 84,000 Cambodian nationals had crossed the border, from Aranyaprathet alone, back to their home country. Thani Samartkit, Governor of Rayong Province, also in the Thai East, ordered, in the meantime, concerned parties to restore confidence among local employers and migrant workers, as the exodus of Cambodian workers is seriously affecting local agriculture, tourism, restaurants and construction. The governor also instructed local agencies concerned to bring migrant workers in the province into order through their official registrations as legal migrant laborers. Panitan Wattanayagorn, a political science lecturer at Bangkok-based Chulalongkorn University, told journalists that up to about three million migrant workers in Thailand have not yet been brought into order, including Muslim Rohingyas, pointing out that legalizing the migrant workers will provide them with basic rights, protect them from human trafficking and improve the national image. (TNA)