The 15-day grace period during which workers from Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia could legalise their status in Thailand ended on Monday (August 7).

Hundreds of employers appeared in the registration centres along with their workers in the last few days before the deadline.

Waranon Pitiwan, director-general of the Labour Ministry’s Department of Employment, said the centres would be closed later on Monday.

Officials would next interview applicants on their appointed dates within 30 days and issue identification documents for the labourers, he said.

Employers must then submit the documents for further processing at “one-stop service centres” being set up in Thailand by the countries of origin.

Myanmar has centres in Samut Sakhon, Samut Prakan, Chiang Rai, Tak and Ranong and will open others in Chiang Mai, Nakhon Sawan and Songkhla.

Cambodia’s centres are in Rayong, Songkhla and Bangkok. Lao migrants must contact their country’s embassy in Bangkok.

Waranon urged employers of more than 10 migrant workers to have the pertinent documents ready for their interviews – pay records, contracts and conditions of employment.

He said each province’s labour office has Cambodian and Myanmar interpreters to assist in the interviews. Waranon expected 300-500 applicants to be processed each day.

The temporary centres – Bangkok alone has 11 of them – were established to ease the impact of the Royal Decree on Managing the Work of Aliens 2017 issued on June 23, which set out hefty fines for violators, though the scale of the fines is being reviewed.

The decree would have imposed a fine of Bt400,000 to Bt800,000 for employing unregistered foreign workers. The threatened amounts prompted Thai employers to dismiss thousands of foreign workers, triggering an exodus out of the country and fears of labour shortages in some industries.