LABOUR-THAILAND: At Home or Abroad, Migrant Workers Get Abused

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Frances Suselo

BANGKOK, Nov 10 2005 (IPS) - Thai domestic workers working overseas risk discrimination as well as physical and verbal abuse -but then so do migrant workers coming to this country.

In Taiwan, which is home to 300,000- 500,000 migrant workers, “many of them (domestic workers) are not allowed to communicate with their friends, or even go outside the house,” says Pipat Traichan from the Thai Catholic Commission for Migrants and Prisoners

”They suffer verbal and physical abuse, salary deductions are common and they are expected to be on call all the time,” Pipat said.

Under Taiwanese law, there is a difference between being a ‘caretaker’ and a ‘housekeeper’.

Pipat explained that a caretaker’s job is to look after a child or an elderly person and included feeding, bathing or babysitting while it was the role of the housekeeper to cook and cleaning the house. ”But what often happens is that the two roles are merged into one,” said Pipat.

The domestic worker often has to take care of the children and the elderly, and she may also have to cook for the entire family, clean the house, wash and iron clothes, do groceries. ”It’s just too much,” Pipat said.

From January to June this year, 105,301 Thais, mostly women, left the country to earn about 580 Taiwanese dollars a day (around 17 US dollars), compared to the Thai minimum wage of 181 baht a day (four dollars).

Many of these domestic workers, mostly farmers from northern Thailand, go abroad once the farming season ends, “because there is nothing else to do,” Pipat said.

In August, 3,126 Thais left to take up domestic work in Taiwan and Pipat expects the number to increase in the future.

While Thais are looking abroad for better salaries, their own country is a magnet for migrant workers from poorer countries, mainly adjacent Burma, Cambodia and the Laos.

Many of these countries’ women migrant workers- 80 percent of them Burmese-cite better earning as the primary reason for coming to Thailand.

There are an estimated one million Burmese migrant workers in Thailand. While most of the women serve as domestic workers, the men do work ranging from construction work, fishing to factory work and farming.

Similarities and contrasts in situations faced by Thai migrant workers and foreign migrants working in Thailand – as well as ironies in Thailand being both a labour-sending as well as a labour-receiving country – were discussed at a conference organised, late October, by the Mahidol University and supported by the supported by the Rockefeller Foundation.

Speaking at the conference, Thai senator Thongbai Thongbao said: ”Thailand is a happy land, while in Myanmar the people are suffering from military dictatorship. There are no jobs there, so they have a better chance of a better life in Thailand.”

Stressing that economics often shapes the path of labour migration, the senator noted that it is becoming ”rare to see Vietnamese domestic workers in Thailand because the Vietnamese economy is improving.”

Thongbai said foreign workers can apply for work permits once they are registered and have a legal status.

Nevertheless, according to Prof. Sureeporn Punpuing at the Institute for Population and Social Research (IPSR) of Mahidol University, workers complain that the registration process is ”not well-explained, too short, denies permits to workers under the age of 18 years old and imposes health tests without procedural clarity”.

According to Sureeporn, almost 40 percent of the 528 domestic workers she surveyed for a study, were not work permit holders and this made them vulnerable to exploitation.

Two-fifths of that group had encounters with Thai authorities and nearly half reported Thai police extorting money. At least 30 percent were threatened with deportation, and 25 percent were jailed overnight.

Sureeporn’s study found that half of migrants working in Chiang Mai and Mae Sot, a Thai province on the border with Burma, reported verbal abuse – both yelling and swearing. They told her that they were threatened, locked up, cheated, and physically abused – including being hit, slapped, or even raped.

All this for a salary usually ranging from 1,000 baht to 3,000 baht (24 to 73 dollars) a month.

Pipat called for more support for Thai migrant workers in Taiwan, and is envious of Filipino domestic workers there, who he says have better backing from their government.

”They are supported by their own government, while there is only one Thai NGO that works with overseas workers,” he explains. “The Thai workers feel like they can’t complain to anyone when they are mistreated,” Pipat said. ”They are more powerless than their Filipino counterparts who know their rights.”

But if Thailand has made little effort to protect the rights of its domestic workers abroad, it has done even less for foreign domestic workers in its own territory.

Sureeporn’s study has listed several recommendations, made mostly to the Thai government, including acknowledgement of domestic work as labour protected by Thai laws.

This would be a significant move since it is common for many labour-receiving countries, including Thailand, to exclude domestic work from coverage under labour laws. Thai domestic workers are also less protected due to this exclusion in foreign countries.

Sureeporn suggested that the registration of migrant workers should be publicly disseminated in the predominant languages of the migrant community.

Sen. Thongbao feels that the Thai government has shown considerable compassion to migrant workers, considering that 35,000 Burmese workers have ‘disappeared’ in Thailand after they registered with Thai authorities this year.

”Since we have this shortage of labour problem and they (migrant workers) need work, it’s a win-win situation,” he said. ”The Thai government lets them in out of humanitarian reasons.”

”Before, it is safe to say, Thai people used to look down on them. But now, we are becoming more familiar with them. We have better relations because we have lived together for so many years. You can even see Thai men marrying Burmese females who used to be domestic workers.”