The centres will operate from November 1 onward and each support 500 workers a day, Department of Employment (DOE) chief Waranon Pitiwan said on Friday.

One centre would be located in The Square Bang Yai in Nonthaburi’s Bang Bua Thong district and the other in Zeer Rangsit in Pathum Thani’s Lam Lukka district.

In their first phase of operation each of the centres will focus on processing 20,000 Myanmar workers who had already been verified as having an employer and paid fees for a certification of identity (CI) and a work permit, he said.

The 20,000 migrant workers are caught in a permit-processing backlog at the current nine centres.

Waranon urged the workers to collect queue cards for either of these two centres from the DOE provincial branch offices or the DOE Bangkok Area 1-10 offices from Friday onward.

Waranon also said that a total of 295,000 Myanmar workers had paid the fee for CI issuance through 7-11 stores. The remaining 125,000 workers should quickly do the same so that they could enter the nationality identification process before the December 31 deadline.