850,000 migrants register in Thailand: ministry

March 4, 2010
(AFP)

BANGKOK- Around 850,000 migrant workers in Thailand have met a deadline to start a registration process, the labour ministry said Thursday, as rights groups made renewed calls for a halt to the policy.

Thailand had ordered 1.3 million eligible citizens from neighbouring Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos to begin the process of registering and verifying their nationality by Sunday or risk deportation.

To enter the process migrants must pay registration and medical fees of 3,800 baht (116 dollars) -- a large sum for people who mostly have low-paid jobs in the manufacturing, agricultural and domestic sectors.

The full registration process takes two years to complete and will eventually entitle the migrants to claim temporary work permits.

"Some 850,000 migrant workers met the deadline" said Supat Gukun, a Labour Ministry official.

The 1.3 million are eligible because they registered for different one-year work permits last year.

Thai authorities estimate there are up to another 1.2 million unregistered migrants in the country who will not be eligible for the new process.

Human Rights Watch said the registration system left migrants open to abuse.

Unscrupulous officials and employers will now be able to threaten unregistered migrants with deportation in order to extort money, said the group's Thailand expert Phil Robertson.

"The abuses against migrant workers will more than likely increase as a result of more migrant workers becoming undocumented and therefore vulnerable," said Robertson.

The New York-based rights group released a report last week that documented a pattern of systemic abuse against migrant workers, from extrajudicial killings to torture, arbitrary arrest and extortion.

Thailand's government said a task force would be dispatched to deport unregistered workers but they have not yet announced any firm plans to do so.

"Immigration police and labour officials will check at every factory, and if they hire migrant workers without a permit then those people must be repatriated," said another Labour ministry official, Thanich Numnoi.

Thailand's economy relies on migrant workers from its poorer neighbours, but in recent months the country has become tougher on immigration at its borders.