Jobless migrant sex workers fear for the future

BUa used to earn up to 40,000 baht (RM5,520) a month as a sex worker in thailand’s northern province of Chiang Mai when the coronavirus forced entertainment venues to close, leaving her jobless.

Since March, the 32-year-old single mother, who is Burmese, has racked up debts of more than 15,000 baht (RM2,070) to pay for her daughter’s education and rent.

Bua survived on handouts from the sex worker group empower Foundation, which ranged from rice to tampons, since government handouts required her to show a thai identification card.

“If it wasn’t for empower, I would have committed suicide,” said Bua, who asked in a phone interview not to use her real name and requested anonymity so family members did not find out about her work.

While bars, pubs and karaoke reopen from Wednesday after being closed for four months, sex workers fear there will be few clients as most are foreigners and the borders remain closed.

a 2014 Unaids report estimated there were 123,530 sex workers in thailand but advocacy groups put the figure at more than twice that number, including tens of thousands of migrants from neighbouring Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

Many young women are now among the two million thais the state planning agency believes may be made unemployed this year because of the impact of the virus.

In thailand, prostitution is illegal and punishable by a fine of 1,000 baht (RM140) and customers who pay for sex with underage workers can be jailed for up to six years.

But over the years, the country has come to be known for sex tourism, with large numbers frequenting bars, massage parlours and karaoke lounges that have multiplied due to the spike in tourist numbers as the law is not enforced.

the coronavirus crisis has forced many sex workers to turn to new types of work, from selling goods to becoming waitresses.

But for migrant workers, there are fewer options. activists say migrant or stateless sex workers are among the hardest hit by the economic impact of the coronavirus.

When Bua applied for a job at a grocery store, she was told they preferred to hire thai staff despite her perfect thai.

“We have been abandoned. We have been made invisible, even though we were the first (to be unemployed after the coronavirus),” said Mai Junta, a representative from empower Foundation in Chiang Mai. — Reuters