A recent estimate of the number of migrant workers in Thailand was set at more than three million, but the registered number is 700,000 workers, and they are mainly from Burma. Recently… traffickers brought children from refugee camps along the border in Tak Province to inner provinces of Thailand, Children would be brought and forced to work as domestic helpers for pitiful wages. The situation in other sectors, such as prostitution, begging and flower-selling remained unchanged in 2008 and last year, the centre’s report said.
Ekkalak said the rate Burmese workers have to pay to middlemen to work in Thailand had increased, from the recent figure of around 20,000 baht (US$606), to 25,000 baht, nearly twice the amount demanded in the previous year. It takes most of them at least a year to repay the brokers. He added that police have only been able to arrest minor Burmese traffickers after raids on suspected factories, failing to net the masterminds. Local police were not brave enough to charge them trafficking kingpins under the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act 2008, but tend to lay charges for lesser offences.
Thai Minister of Social Development and Human Security Issara Somchai said at the opening of anti-human trafficking campaign in Bangkok that recent trafficking has become a more complex process.