EMPLOYERS of foreign workers are worried about government efforts to solve the migrant workers’ issue, as they feel recently-announced measures are not enough to relieve the worker shortage and many small businesses may have to temporarily close down.

The government addressed the problem by issuing an order delaying enforcement of the new Migrant Worker Royal Ordinance for six months. The law, which proposed to punish both employers and migrant workers for violations, has received a mixed reaction, with employers admitting that they were still worried about the impact on their businesses in the future.

Thai Fisheries Association chairman Mongkol Sukcharoenkana said that it was obvious that the harsh punishments could effectively solve the illegal migrant worker problems, but it would be like chemotherapy that can treat cancer but has tremendous side effects on the whole system.

Many problems unresolved

Mongkol agreed with the government using its special power to relieve the impacts of this law. However, he cautioned that the measures under the new National Council for Peace and Order ruling might not be enough to relieve all the problems from the ordinance.

“This law greatly affects many upstream industries such as agriculture, fisheries, construction, and services, as these industries need large numbers of foreign workers to run their businesses and they are forced to stop their operations because of the fear of severe punishment and their workers have to return home,” he said.

“The exemption of the legal punishment until next year is good, because we can have enough time to adjust our business to the new law, but there are still many problems that are still unsolved by this NCPO order.”

He pointed out that the memorandum of understanding (MoU) to hire foreign workers contained several problems, which were left unsolved by the NCPO order. For instance, illegal workers currently working in Thailand have to return home to register into the MoU system, before they can work in Thailand legally, which costs them a huge amount of unnecessary expense.

The employers also have to pay a high price – more than Bt20,000 per migrant worker – to hire workers via the MoU system, and it is a major problem for small businesses. This is because they do not have much of a budget and require only a few workers, which makes it too expensive to hire via the MoU system.

Jutamas Bhupornwiwat, an SME operator, also said that the law was very troublesome to her and her business and urged the government to improve the workers’ importing and registration system.

“I am relieved that the government has postponed the punishment on this law until next year, as it will give me enough time to make my employees legal,” Jutamas said.

“However, I am still concerned about the worker import system because it does not have enough assurance that after we spend a lot to import workers we will get the workers for our business.”

She stated that the MoU system offers only a four-month guarantee that the workers will not change jobs, in which case the employer will lose out on the cost of hiring.