TAK, 15 July 2011 – A number of Myanmar citizens have been arrested in Tak province after entering Thailand with the intention to find jobs and take advantage of the new government’s wage hike policy to 300 THB a day.
On the occasion of Buddhist Lent this year, tens of thousands of people from Myanmar are crossing the border into Mae Sot district of the northern province of Tak to spend their four-day holiday visiting temples and making merits. The atmosphere in the Mae Sot Municipality has been full of energy, benefiting the trade of local products.
However, officers of the Natural Resources and Environmental Crime Suppression Division have apprehended a total of 50 Myanmar nationals, comprising 40 men and 10 women, for planning to seek illegal employment within the Kingdom. Their agents reportedly escaped.
According to the interrogation, the border crossers were about to travel from Tak to the nearby Kamphaeng Phet province to board a bus to Bangkok, where they would look for employers in order to be registered as a legal worker afterwards. They claimed that their motive was the incoming government’s policy to increase the minimum wage to 300 THB per day, which would allow them to make a good living.
