Khmer Times/Pav Suy Monday, 25 July 2016
More than 280 Cambodian migrants have been deported from Thailand this month for illegally living and working in the country, according to a National Police report released on Saturday.
Of the 283 deportees, 129 were expelled from Thailand through the Daung International Border Checkpoint in Battambang’s Kamrieng district last Friday.
Neither district nor provincial police spokespersons said their offices oversaw repatriations of the migrants, and Daung Checkpoint officials could not be reached for comment yesterday.
The remaining 153 migrants repatriated to Cambodia this month were deported on the sixth, a National Police spokesperson said.
The latest deportations likely result in part from a recent move by the Thai government to crack down on migrant worker registration, which the Bangkok Post reported on in February.
Arak Phrommanee, the head of Thailand’s Employment Department, was quoted by the Post as saying his department would start a nationwide search for illegal migrants in industrial zones, adding that the number of illegal migrant workers in his country was “out of control.”
Moeun Tola, executive director of the newly-formed Center for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights (Central), had also said insufficient employment in Cambodia, low wages for the jobs that do exist here and the high price of work permits were all drivers of illegal migration.
The Ministry of Labor so far has put the number of legal Cambodian migrants now working abroad at about 700,000.
The data on illegal Cambodian migrant workers, however, is inconclusive.