Jaloon Htaw and Janu : On February 16th of this year, 4 major Thai labor rights NGOs, their respective sub-organizations, and 150 Burmese migrant workers possessing temporary passports sent a public letter to Thailand’s Prime minister, requesting alterations to Thailand’s policies towards Burmese migrant workers before the end of February 2010.
The 28th of February 2010 marks the deadline for Burmese migrant workers to have applied for temporary passports, as decided by the Burmese and Thai governments in 2009.
The February 16th missive was written and signed by the State Enterprises Worker’s Relation Confederation (SERC), the Migrant Working Group (MWG), the Action Network For Migrants (ANM), and the Thai Labor Solidarity Committee (TLSC), as well as 56 smaller affiliates. The 150 migrant worker signatures also on the document were collected from Burmese workers based throughout Thailand.
According to Ko Sein Htay, an officer of the Human Rights and Development Foundation (HRDF), one of the smaller groups that signed the letter, the document was sent in response a January 19th resolution issued by the Thai Cabinet. According a report issued by the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) on February 12th as part of its “Urgent Appeals Programme” the resolution allows migrant workers who possess work permits, and are willing to submit personal information to the Thai and Burmese governments by the 28th of February, a 2 year extension of their work permits while their new temporary migrant worker passports are being processes; however, workers who are not in possession of work permits, have not filed passport applications, or are unwilling to submit their personal information will be deported from Thailand by the end of this February. As temporary work permits are no longer being issued, and filing centers are backlogged and often inaccessible to many workers, AHRC argues that roughly 1 million Burmese workers are unable to submit passport registration forms, and will therefore be deported from the country by the end of the month.
According to Ko Sein Htay, the open letter submitted on February 16th contained 7 demands: that the deadline for passport forms to be filed be extended, that laws for passport brokers be issued to protect migrant workers applying for passports from being charged excess funds, that the Thai government negotiate with the Burmese government to make the application process more accessible, that education about the new passports be made more accessible to workers, that migrant workers unwilling to submit personal information be permitted to remain in Thailand, that work permits be made available to workers who desire them, and that employers who commit labor rights abuses against their migrant worker employees be prosecuted.
“In the Cabinet meeting, they already made a decision, that if migrant workers don’t file for the temporary passports by the end of February, they will be arrested, so we sent this letter to them. We hope that they will accept all of our requests,” said Ko Sein Htay to IMNA.
According to New Light of Myanmar’s February 15th article, “Myanmar workers in Thailand to get legal status”, a Burmese delegation led by Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs U Maung Myint, and a Thai delegation led by Minister of Labor Phaitoon Kaecthong met on February 13th and 14th of this year. The meeting, held in Bagan, marked the 8th convening of the “Myanmar and Thailand on Employment of Myanmar Workers in Thailand” conference. According to the article, representatives from the 2 countries had “fruitful” discussion regard the entrance of new Burmese migrant workers into Thailand, and the verification of the legal statuses of Burmese workers already living in the country.
