CONSTRUCTION WORK Female migrant workers undertake bodymapping at a construction camp in Chiangmai. The maps become colourful, post-it covered illustrations of how unhealthy work really is.

PRECARIOUS LIVING These migrant living quarters in Chiangmai are pretty typical. MMSAWM has now expanded to a second location in a central province of Thailand neighbouring Bangkok.

TRAINING GROUPS Migrant workers and accident victims were joined by government officials at a MMSAWM’s three day training workshop in March 2008. Prior to setting up the project, for months MMSAWM volunteers roamed construction camps and agricultural fields to assess the need. They discovered appalling work-related injury rates and ill-health.

MMSAWM
Thailand: Migrant project challenges terrible dangers

Thai troubles

When 54 migrant workers suffocated in a seafood truck in April, the world’s media focused momentarily on Thailand’s appalling safety record. But a new group, Making Migrant Safety at Work Matter, says deadly exploitation is routine and largely ignored.

In theory, migrant workers in Thailand are granted the same occupational health and safety protection as their Thai counterparts. But when Making Migrant Safety at Work Matter (MMSAWM) foundation volunteers ask migrant workers if they've ever known anyone who was injured - or maybe even died - at work, they say “yes”. And when they ask the workers if they've ever been in accident at work themselves, they say, “yes”.

MMSAWM coordinator Andy Hall says their plight is worsened by a safety enforcement system that is “inefficient and corrupt” combined with a “painfully slow and bureaucratic” compensation system. He adds the Thai economy is heavily dependent on migrant labour, with workers from Myanmar – Burma – estimated to account for 5 per cent of the total Thai workforce. The 54 workers who died on 10 April 2008 in the back of a seafood truck were from Myanmar, and were being smuggled into the resort island of Phuket. Of the 47 who survived, 21 were hospitalised and the rest were detained by police.
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Further information

Making Migrant Safety at Work Matter (MMSAWM)
c/o The Human Rights and Development Foundation
PO Box 63, Chiangmai University Post Office
Chiangmai 50202, Thailand.
email: mmsawm@hrdfoundation.org

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