Sixty duped migrants get job scam help

Agents leave workers in lurch for months

Police and non-profit representatives yesterday helped 60 workers from Myanmar who were duped by con agents into giving them money to work in Thailand, only to be abandoned at an apartment for more than three months with no passports.

“We have been contacted by a network of Myanmar workers to help around 60 who were abandoned by their agents at an apartment in tambon Bang Tho Rat in Muang district of Samut Sakhon province,” said Sompong Srakaew, director of the Labour Rights Promotion Network Foundation (LPN).

He said Myanmar workers paid around 500,000 to 600,000 kyat (about 12,000 to 15,000 baht) each to their agents. The agents told the workers, who arrived in Thailand via the Sing Khon Pass in Prachuap Khiri Khan, they had memorandums of understanding to secure jobs for them.

The workers were easily convinced as they had heard that a previous group of 58 workers who were earlier brought to Thailand by the same agents successfully found employment.

But once this group of workers arrived, they were not given work permits as promised by their agents, and were put up in the same apartment in Samut Sakhon where the previous group of 58 workers were staying.

The agents took all 118 workers’ passports.

After waiting more than three months, the 60 Myanmar workers sought help from the Solidarity Committee for the Protection of Myanmar Migrant Workers, a network of Myanmar volunteers in Thailand. Mr Sompong said he had been notified of the plight of these workers earlier this week.

“We are investigating whether they are victims of a human trafficking ring,” Mr Sompong said. LPN and Thai authorities are making inquiries in both Thailand and Myanmar to find out which agents lured them here.

The workers filed a complaint with the Bang Tho Rat police station against the con agents. Mr Sompong said the LPN and police officers are interviewing the workers for more information.

Pol Col Surapong Thaiprasert, a senior police officer in Samut Sakhon, said the police would question all 118 Myanmar workers. “The workers with all the necessary documents will be allowed to continue working. But people with no work documents will be sent back to their country,” he said.

Director-general of the Employment Department Waranon Pitiwan said people involved in deceiving Myanmar workers are violating the recently issued royal decree on managing the work of aliens.

Offenders face three to six years in prison or a 600,000 to one million baht fine for each worker they cheated.

Mr Waranon also gave updates on the 100 centres the Employment Department plans to launch nationwide to register an expected 1.5 million illegal workers from Monday to Aug 7.

During that period, employers are required to prove the validity of employment and the identity of their workers.

Mr Waranon said employers are not required to bring their employees to the centre since the department would at first accept only paper applications.

Employers can download the registration form online at www.doe.go.th.

They are required to submit a copy of the corporate identification issued by the Commerce Ministry and photographs of their foreign employees.