REVOLVING through a BROKEN system

Thailand News - Perspective - Sunday December 09, 2007

REVOLVING through a BROKEN system

Every objective analysis shows that migrant workers are an essential part of the Thai economy, yet many are forced to endure a cycle of harassment, deportation and exploitive brokers, writes ERIKA FRY

Police Commander Wichai Pongsiri calls it a compromise.

Twice a month, his provincial police force sweeps the streets and public areas of Samut Sakhon for migrant workers.

Anyone unlucky enough to be found - eating, worshipping, commuting, living! - outside their factory or domicile and without their official documents is rounded up, jailed and, a couple days later, sent away for deportation.

It's considered a compromise because they only do this twice a month.

Yet, it's really not so conciliatory from the perspective of the province's estimated population of 220,000 foreign workers. Registered migrants who may have left their documents at home, or who carry photocopies because their employer keeps the real thing, or who don't have the official ones because they're still being processed by the Ministry of Labour will be deported all the same.

The suppression scheme, which the police commander instituted when he assumed the position two months ago, resulted in 1,700 deportations in October, and - along with a set of decrees restricting workers' rights to own mobile phones, ride motorbikes, celebrate religious holidays and have babies - is, for now, his best solution for Samut Sakhon's migrant problem.

This best solution is far from perfect: Many of the 1,700 deportees, he says, will be back in a few days.

Pol Maj-Gen Wichai readily acknowledges his policy is strict, but, listing migrant workers along with drugs, guns, and motorbike thefts as Samut Sakhon's primary law enforcement issues, calls it his "duty".

"If an employer wants to keep workers, they must have them strictly under control and out of public areas. Considering them as human beings, these restrictions are not fair, but as people that have entered the country illegally, it's a compromise. The government has compromised a lot already, and in this case it's suitable."

(Migrant arrests rarely coincide with discipline or legal action against the employers, who are supposed to be "in control" of their workers. Pol Maj-Gen Wichai says this is because it is hard to know who the employers are.)

Yet, the commander's willingness "to compromise" on the migrant issue at all in these security-minded times makes him a relatively progressive and nuanced thinker on the issue.

Painted in Thai editorials and the day's political rhetoric as dirty, criminal and a threat to national security, the nation's migrant workforce gets a bad rap, and in an ever-increasing number of disturbing incidents, even worse treatment.

On fishing boats, dead bodies are thrown overboard; at construction sites, accidents are covered up and bodies burned. Last month, five Burmese workers were killed by their employers in Tak for allegedly stealing corn, and a boatload of fishermen were fed poisoned food, in an effort by their employer to avoid paying them the wages they had earned from three years' work on his boat. In September 2006, a raid at Samut Sakhon's fortress-like Ranya Paew shrimp factory uncovered a bunch of guns and 800 migrant men, women and children (many hidden up in the rafters), who in addition to peeling shrimp for 12+ hours a day, were occasionally forced to strip or have rods rammed up their nostrils. Despite evidence of trafficking, 200 of them were deported after the ordeal.

Though such stories would seem to indicate migrants are more often victims than perpetrators of crimes, half of 316 employers of migrants, interviewed in a 2006 Mahidol University-ILO study, agreed with the premise of "locking migrants in at night so they don't escape".

Meanwhile, official policy also often seems only to reinforce and perpetuate such notions. Migrant workers in four additional provinces are subject to the same above-mentioned Samut Sakhon decrees - in response to which women are reportedly aborting themselves with meat skewers to avoid deportation. Yet last week the measures were publicly endorsed by Deputy Prime Minister Sonthi Boonyaratkalin.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education's Education for All initiative is often ignored at Samut Sakhon schools, where migrant children are often turned away for fear of potential conflict.

"We hear cases of dire and extreme hardship. It's like they're not human, and in most cases we can do nothing but send them home. We need state structures to handle this," said National Human Rights Commissioner Sunee Chaiyarose at a seminar on migrant labour last month.

Migrant-powered province

A fishing port 30 kilometres west of Bangkok, Samut Sakhon is rich with industry, agriculture and a migrant population to power it. The province has prospered and now boasts the nation's 2nd highest income per capita.

Nowhere is the influx of migrants more noticeable than at the fishing pier, where each afternoon, around 4.30, the dock gets crowded with men in rubber boots and plastic smocks.

The afternoon I visit, several barefoot boys are pitching in, sweeping up fish guts with cardboard paddles. They are all foreign workers.

Of the province's estimated 220,000 migrant labourers, Pol Maj-Gen Wichai says only 70,000 are registered within the government's system. This has fallen from the 100,000 that were registered in the province just two years ago - a decrease which he attributes to the ban on registration of new migrant labourers and the inability of registered migrants to switch employers.

Most of these workers have come from Burma, usually by way of costly brokers and border crossings in Mae Sot or Kanchanaburi, to find work in Samut Sakhon's fields, fishing boats, or seafood processing factories.

Even though the majority of the migrant workforce is illegal, the police chief is more likely to speak of the migrants' role in terms of economic stability than he is of national security.

According to Pol Maj-Gen Wichai, Samut Sakhon's "migrant problem" is not due to the large migrant population, but the broken system to manage them.

"The government needs to issue policies to improve the current situation. Local authorities can't do anything about the rules."

He says there has not been a rise in crime with the presence of migrant workers in the province. Instead, he calls them, however guardedly, "sort of beneficial" ("they spend locally") and definitely necessary.

"Employers simply have no other alternatives," he says. "Thai workers don't want to do these jobs. They don't offer security and they demand patience that Thai workers don't have - for a job that often is 4 p.m. to 4 a.m. and involves a terrible fish smell."

For the most part, the local Thai community seems to agree with the police officer.

"All the businesses would close down without them. Even our housework wouldn't get done," says Monthip Tantivuttikul, a rice mill and construction company owner who employs 40 registered Mon workers from Burma.

Monthip first hired foreign workers 10 years ago when he could not find Thai workers (in the past, they had come from Isan). Now, aside from three supervisor positions, his entire workforce is Mon, and they are "more responsible" in their work. He says he pays them according to their skill level, and at the same wage rates he would Thai workers.

His employees make 5,000-6,000 baht a month - the average income for migrant workers in Samut Sakhon, which, while much better than migrants receive elsewhere in the country, due to other factors is actually not equivalent to a Thai wage.

Because of the language barrier and registration issues (he pays the cost for about half of his employees - those who are "good workers"), Monthip says he would rather hire Thai workers, but they have all gone abroad or to other areas of the country for more highly-paid positions.

The only problems he has with his foreign workers, he says, are the problems they have with the police.

On multiple occasions Monthip has had to bail out employees who, even with their official registration in hand and even while in their own homes, were arrested by the police. Last month, 25 were arrested over their lunch break. (The police give a different version of the story. Monthip has submitted the cases to the National Human Rights Commission).

Not unlike every other migrant worker interviewed for this story in Bangkok and Chiang Mai, Monthip says his employees are harassed by the police, at their homes and often on paydays, through numerous techniques and for all sorts of things - despite the fact that most already pay the police a monthly 500-baht tax that supposedly safeguards them from arrests for riding motorbikes and other infractions.

This pattern of bribery, corruption, and exploitation has been frustrating to Monthip, and is chipping away at the incentive, and his resolve to register his workers and employ them legally.

"Many employers prefer to not register their workers, and just pay the authorities the 5,500 baht that will keep them out of trouble. I want to follow the law, but if they don't stop the bribery, I might go back to those methods too," he says. Initially he did not register workers either.

Bondaged by brokers

Police are hardly the lone agents of exploitation. The Labour Promotion Network (LPN), an NGO which in just a few years of working on migrant issues in Samut Sakhon has collected upwards of 3,000 migrant cases, published a report with United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking which claimed that 80-90% of the province's migrant workers are kept in a debt bondage situation.

The debt may be to the employer, or increasingly, to Samut Sakhon's vast network of brokers, explains LPN president Sompong Srakaew.

In his research, Sompong has identified 13 different types of brokers - both Burmese and Thai. They usually work together, and often at the behest of employers, to take advantage of foreign workers in various ways.

He estimates there are anywhere from 500 to 1,000 of these brokers operating in the province. Among other activities, they usher migrants to the border, across the border, and to jobs in Samut Sakhon (though trips may not involve this many steps, the service will usually cost 5,000-10,000 baht). Other brokers make fake work permits, negotiate with police to clear arrests, and pre-purchase TVs and DVD players for the workers to pay for in installments with enormous interest.

Though there have been a few arrests (two Burmese brokers were arrested just last month), the province's policing of exploitative brokers and employers has not been as productive as policing the exploited. There were 168 employers and brokers arrested through October of this year, versus 5,219 migrants.

Pol Maj-Gen Wichai assures that migrants - even unregistered ones - can safely report crimes and complaints to police and have their cases investigated. However, such complaints and crimes are rare, he says.

While he admits some corruption may exist in the system, he has not seen cases of forged documents or reason for the firing, fines, and stiff penalty that would accompany acts of internal corruption and bribery.

At LPN, though, they have binders thick with evidence of such activities. Notable, for example, is the number of registration documents the organisation has collected for a migrant worker named "Mr Tak". Despite the fact that these documents list the same name, 10-digit identification number, date of birth and are otherwise identical, each form pictures a different individual - some male, some female.

Surachai, a staff member of LPN, says the fake documents are common and that employers are often complicit in making the documents. The migrants, meanwhile, are sometimes unaware of the fraud due to their inability to read Thai.

Community sympathy

While there may be no shortage of people taking advantage of the migrants, the prevailing sentiment among the wider community is one of sympathy, or at least neutral acceptance, towards the workers.

Aside from one food vendor located around the corner from the fishing pier who complained that the foreign workers have led to lower wages, displaced Thai workers, raised housing costs, crowded temple fairs and, because they cook among themselves, contribute no new business, the rest of a small number of other community members interviewed, however, spoke of populations that co-exist, if not mix, just fine.

"They have to work too," says a motorbike taxi driver stationed across from the pier, who first noticed the greater presence of foreign workers 4 or 5 years ago and says he feels sorry whenever he sees authorities harassing and chasing them.

He adds that while there was some initial discomfort with demographic changes, both the Thai community and migrant population have since adapted and adjusted. He has experienced no problems, but has seen his business grow with their presence.

Supawee, a village community leader, felt similarly, and though she rarely associates with the workers, she once felt compelled to hide several who were fleeing a raid on a neighbouring factory. "I didn't think they were a threat," she said, adding that the only people that have problems with the foreign workers are the authorities, and she speculates that this is an attempt to exercise power.

She says she thinks of them like people from the provinces - "our children can play together" - and has noticed that the skin powder worn on the faces of many Burmese have become popular among some of Samut Sakhon's Thai population.

"They're rather quiet, fine neighbours," said another a food vendor near the pier, who lives next to migrant workers.

The most common observation noted by community members about demographic differences was that the migrants were more religious ("they eat more simply," "hygiene standards are not as good", were also mentioned) - in any case, not exactly the material to match fear-mongering editorials and right-curbing political policy.

"The government needs to take quick action to improve all the systems and strike the balance between necessity and national security," says Pol Maj-Gen Wichai. He advocates instituting a one-stop service, where registrations with the Ministries of Labour, Health, and Interior can be completed at one place and at one time.

In the meantime, he'll keep up his bi-monthly sweeps and deportations. The workers will find their way back, and the cycle of profit will continue.

This is the second in a series on migrant workers in Thailand.

Bangkok Post