The high price of cheap food... ====================== SLAVES AT SEA With an annual catch of 1.8 million tonnes in 2010, Thailand exports $7.13 billion of fish annually, and the sector employs an estimated 2 million workers, the report said. Attempts to cut labour costs have led to the large-scale employment of migrant workers, “in some cases using deceptive and coercive labour practices,” it said. The report cited National Fisheries Association of Thailand estimates of 142,845 fishermen employed on 9,523 boats, and an industry shortage of 50,000 workers. The survey did not set out to talk to foreigners or migrants, but “…the preponderance of migrant workers in the sample … demonstrates the extent to which the Thai fishing industry relies on foreign migrant labour, with Thai workers making up less than 5 percent of the workers surveyed in three of the sample provinces," the study said. Overall, 51.3 percent of those surveyed were Burmese and 40.4 percent Cambodian. One group of seven men, from Banteay Meanchey province in Cambodia, met a broker at the Thai border who offered them construction jobs. They were told that the boat they boarded would be used to haul cement, but they had in fact been sold for 25,000 baht ($800) each and spent more than two years working on a fishing vessel, where they endured increasingly severe physical abuse and verbal threats. They managed to escape while docked in Indonesia, but their captain refused to pay their wages. After several months in an immigration detention centre, they were repatriated. From another boat with 23 Cambodians and four Thais, a 28-year-old Cambodian man said he worked 8 to 24 hours a day, with no days off. His boat was seized in August 2012 by authorities in Mauritius, and after seven months he and other workers were repatriated to Phnom Penh, but he was never paid for the 2-1/2 years he worked on the Thai fishing vessel. The youngest fishermen surveyed were 12 and 14. The 14-year-old had tried to escape once because he was homesick, but said he could not leave because of the threat of violence. Three children interviewed said they were forced to work on the boat by their parents.
Posted on: Wed, 04 Sep 2013 16:39:19 +0000
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