Education a weapon in fighting sex trade
Career training centres educate local girls to stop scourge of trafficking, writes Penchan Charoensuthipan
A16-year-old girl from a poor family in Chiang Rai is being taught how to fight the advances of gangs looking to force women like her into the sex trade.
The girl, named only as Sa, is not being taught how to battle in the physical sense, but she is gaining the vital skills that will allow her to avoid a lifetime of servitude and exploitation by becoming more socially mobile.
In Sa’s village gangsters typically prowl the area looking for young, poor women who they can buy from their families and force into prostitution.
A career training centre in Chiang Rai is teaching Sa and other girls from the northern provinces is helping prepare them for decent careers.
Sa is taking classes to prepare her for work in the hospitality industry.
The Social Development and Human Security Ministry regards the centres as an indirect means to deal with human trafficking problems, which have put Thailand on a US watch list. According to US authorities last month, hundreds of women were brought from Thailand to the US and forced to be “modern day sex slaves”, according to an indictment.
The centre will help them “secure their future careers, income and build their selfreliance,” said permanent secretary for the ministry, Maitri Inthusut.
His ministry stresses that measures to prevent women from being forced into the sex trade are as important as reactive measures undertaken by the government to crack down on trafficking.
Such crimes have long blighted many of Thailand’s industries from fishing to factory work.
Sa, a resident of Chiang Rai’s Mae Suai district, is interested in hospitality and is being trained in how to use fabrics to decorate dinner tables and other decorative flourishes that make hotel guests happy.
She is learning how to fold bath towels in various creative ways to resemble flowers and animals.
“My teacher also told me she will help find a job for me after graduation,” she said, adding she is looking forward to earning an income to help support the studies of her two younger siblings, aged seven and three and ensure they have enough food. “I’m ready to work hard for the family.” Her family has had a tough time ever since her mother was arrested on a drug charge and given a jail term of 20 years.
This forced her father, a construction worker in Bangkok, to return to his home province to take care of his three children.
Broken homes and turbulent domestic situations are what the ministry considers fertile ground among criminals looking to exploit people who are poor and vulnerable.
The education centres have been set up in Chiang Rai, Phrae, Nan, Phayao and Uttaradit provinces.
The education scheme, first established in 1989 under the Department of Public Welfare, intends to help underage girls and women who were victims of the tok kiew, said Leartpanya Buranabandit, chief of Women’s Affairs and Family Development.
Tok kiew, a term borrowed from rice cultivation when rice crops were secured by an agent before being harvested, refers to a system in which brothel agents visited poor villages and pay cash to the parents of good-looking girls to “reserve” them for future work as prostitutes.
Under today’s mission, the centre aims to benefit the poor, uneducated people as an alternative education source and help them stand firmly on their feet.
Students will be given accommodation, meals and, more importantly, knowledge on a wide variety of jobs. After graduation, they can also ask for money to set up businesses, while any products they make can be sold via ministry-run shops in malls.