BANGKOK, 13 July 2015 – The Labour Ministry has approved measures to help migrant fishermen whose Thai employers could not bring boats out to the sea as they fail to meet requirements of IUU fishing control, Labour Minister Surasak Kanjanarat revealed on Monday.
According to the measures proposed by the Employment Department, registered migrant fishermen can file a request to work with one or two additional employers while their original employers are unable to carry out normal fishing operation.
In such a case, migrant workers can work for one or two more employers on a borrowing basis. Original employers must give consent to the lending of their workers to other fishing operators while the migrants remain subordinates of them.
The measures came after some migrant workers escaped from employers who have no license for operation and looked for new employers.
The Employment Department has informed its branches in twenty two coastal provinces where fisheries are main businesses of the new assistance measure which is expected come into force soon. Meanwhile, Gen Surasak advised employers who encountered such a problem to ask for help from the Labour Ministry which would consider assistance on a case by case basis.
He said that the ministry has no plans to reopen the registration for illegal migrant workers as it was not the way to solve the problem at the root cause.
In the recently-ended registration, he added, more than 80,000 migrant workers were registered. The Labour Ministry will, from now, put priority on legal import of the workers as they are easier to be managed.
