In an effort to switch thousands of Myanmar migrants in Thailand from temporary documents to passports, the Myanmar government will launch a preliminary survey of workers on August 15, the Ministry of Labour says.
Immigration officials and representatives from the Myanmar Overseas Employment Agencies Federation will travel to all 77 districts of Thailand to collect information about the documents held by workers. Officials said it would take three months, and is scheduled to conclude in mid-November with documents issued in December.
The few who hold a national registration card and a household registration in addition to their Thai-supplied temporary residency card – known as a “pink card” – will be eligible to apply for a passport, said U Myo Aung, permanent secretary for the labour ministry.
Workers who only hold the pink card without the other necessary documents – estimated by rights groups to be in the majority – will be issued certificates of identity valid for two years, U Myo Aung added.
After collecting the nationwide data, the surveyors plan to create a database for the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok. The latest registration program for the largely undocumented Myanmar migrant workforce will extend only to workers with employers who agree to vouch for them, and will not be available to anyone self-employed, or employed in one of the overseas industries not sanctioned by the Myanmar government, such as domestic service or the fisheries sector.
Some Thai-based migrant rights groups fear that the survey will only act as a money-making opportunity for corrupt officials, while workers said they were confused by the shuffling documentation policies as they already had to pay for pink-card extensions in June. And not all the necessary points have been finalised by the neighbouring countries’ governments.
“I want to point out that … the Thai government has not promised to issue visas yet,” said Ko Sein Htay, director of the Migrant Workers Rights Network.
By Myanmar Times