The slowness of the approval process under the Labour Ministry disappointed Prayut and led to the demotion of Varanon Peetiwan, from Director-General of the Department of Employment to deputy permanent secretary of the Labour Ministry.

The ministry no longer has full authority to handle the migrant workers following the Prime Minister’s latest order.

The new committee is chaired by the Permanent Secretary of the Interior Ministry, Chatchai Promlert.

Its members include the Director-Generals of the Foreign Ministry’s Consular Affairs, Treaties and Legal Affairs departments, the Royal Thai Police’s Immigration Bureau, the Director of the Electronic Government Agency, the Interior Ministry’s Department of Provincial Administration, the Transportation Ministry’s Marine Department, the Agriculture Ministry’s Fishery Department and the Labour Ministry’s Department of Employment.

Prayut used his power on Wednesday to demote Varanon after it was claimed he had overseen slow progress on the migrant workers register.

Controversial scanner

The demotion caused repercussions as the Labour Minister, General Sirichai Distakul, and three others in his team made surprise resignations from their posts to show solidarity with Varanon. It was Sirichai who had promoted Varanon to the position of Director-General to handle the cases of millions of migrant workers.

More than two million undocumented migrants from neighbouring Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar currently work in Thailand but as of August the authority had only managed to register fewer then 700,000.

The government will introduce a new migrant worker management law in January which allows for tough punishment against those who hire illegal migrants.

The government wanted to give migrants a legal status to avoid chaos and panic among migrants and employers, but bureaucracy at the Labour Ministry has resulted in a painstakingly slow progress.

To Prayut’s disappointment, the Ministry – and Varanon in particular – dragged their feet over the collection of migrant workers’ bio-data, a source at the labour ministry said.

Collecting bio-data requires expensive retina scanners and huge servers, which will cost several million baht, perhaps even more than a billion, the source said.

Varanon was reportedly reluctant to comply with the idea since there was no formal written instruction to do so, meaning he would have been solely responsible if and when the project was launched.

Progress was also slow when the Fishery Department used such technology to collect workers’ bio-data in its own sector. However, its deadline is not until the end of March next year.

The Prime Minister’s latest order to establish the new committee, issued on Thursday, also requires the committee to use the same technology as the Fishery Department, even though the effectiveness of the new system has not yet been proved, the source said.