Spokesmen for Thailands frozen food industry and its billion-dollar food export industry generally are alarmed over threats by the Thai government to deport close to two million unregistered migrant workers.
Leaders of the Thai Frozen Food Association (TFFA) and Thai Food Processors Association (TFPA), had already voiced their concerns last year after Bangkok ordered millions of the migrant workers, largely from Myanmar (Burma) to complete a complicated labor registration process, called national verification (NV), by Dec.
14, or face being sent home.
When that deadline passed, the countrys migrant-worker management committee, chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Chalerm Yoobamrung, agreed to relax measures for more than 260,000 of the migrant workers in Thailand and grant them another month to apply for work permits, which would be processed over the coming three months. The government's statement didn't clarify what would happen to the rest of the two million.
The TFFA and TFPA fear that strict enforcement of the NV rules could see many workers deported, leading to an increase in human trafficking and child labor by the Thai seafood industry. That sort of thing was condemned by the US government in a 2012 report that placed Thailand on a Tier Two watch list of countries classified by Washington as places where human trafficking and labor abuse are rampant, and called for improvements.
Poj Aramwattananont, honorary president of the TFFA, is troubled by the possibility if further downgrading by the US government when it reviews Thailands migrant labour status in February.
"The NV's expiration will result in human trafficking, putting us more in danger of being downgraded to Tier Three status by the US next year," he told a daily newspaper. "The TFFA has been working on this issue for six years, but the situation only grows worse."
A further downgrading in the US State Departments list would mean tougher non-tariff barriers for Thai seafood exporters, in addition to possible cancellation of export orders from America.
The US accounts for 36% of Thai seafood exports, including popular items like shrimp, which are on the menus of famous restaurants like Red Lobster or sold at the supermarket chains such as Walmart.
This latest wave of trouble for the seafood sector comes in the midst of pressure it is facing from the European Union (EU) to improve its act especially the abusive practices of Thai-owned trawlers and fishing boats or face a ban. The EU sounded its warning in 2009, aimed at curtailing illegal fishing in a world where trawlers scoop the seabed using destructive fishing gear in an unregulated manner.
