No light at end of Thai-Myanmar smuggling tunnel

RANONG, Thailand (Reuters) - Thailand beefed up its borderchecks this week after 54 illegal Myanmar migrants died seekinga better life.

But the move will do little to stop economic refugees likeSeng.

"We have a bad government. I cannot save anything from thecrops I produce because soldiers take most of it away," Seng,44, told Reuters in the southern border town of Ranong wherethe migrants were found suffocated in a container truck.

Without the money he sends home from working on a smallfishing boat, Seng's three children would not survive.

"Only when Myanmar has a good government, will I return tolive there," said Seng, who has not seen his family in fouryears.

The fate of the 120 people smuggled in a stifling hot 20-ftcontainer truck last week -- of whom 54 suffocated -- has againfocused attention on the migrant labour issue in Thailand.

Sharing a 2,400 km (1,490 miles) porous border withMyanmar, Thailand is home to some 2 million migrant workers,mostly from its western neighbour, and only a quarter of themare legally registered.

With Thais shunning mundane, dirty and dangerous work onfarms, fishing boats and building sites, and Myanmar's generalsrefusing to fix a crippled economy, Thai officials say theinflux of cheap, migrant labour will continue.

"As long as people are struggling to find a better life, wecannot stop them from entering Thailand," Ranong GovernorKanchanapa Keemun told Reuters.

Ranong, which shares a 170 km (105 mile) water and landborder with Myanmar's fishing port city of Victoria Point, isone of the busiest transit points for migrants, aid workerssay.

"Ranong is the biggest supplier of migrant workers to therest of the country," legal aid worker Suwat Ongsomwhang said.

"If it were a contest, migrant workers would be Ranong'sOTOP," he said, referring to the acronym for a governmentprogramme promoting well-known products from villages.

ORDERS FOR MIGRANTS

Employers across the country, from hotels on the resortisland of Phuket to factories in Bangkok and fishing boats inthe Gulf of Thailand, place orders for migrants through brokersin Ranong and Victoria Point, Suwat said.

Once the brokers gather enough workers, they are smuggledacross rivers or through forested hills to Ranong from VictoriaPoint, he said.

Various tactics are used to evade border checks. Theillegal immigrants are jammed into container trucks, hiddenunder fresh produce in pickup trucks, or in fishing boats.

The 54 who died last week were trapped for several hours ina 20-ft container after the refrigeration system broke down.

The Migrant Worker Group, a coalition of NGOs, said it hasdocumented 10 cases in which more than 100 people had diedbeing transported to Thailand in the past year.

Ranong, the least populated of Thailand's 76 provinces with180,000 Thais, is home to 50,000 registered and 20,000unregistered Myanmar migrants, Governor Kanchanapa said.

But Suwat said other estimates suggest the entire Myanmarpopulation in Ranong could be three times higher as mostemployers under-report the number of migrants they hire.

Many migrants work in rubber plantations or confined atfishing piers where their presence is not visible to lawenforcers, leaving their treatment a matter of employers'discretion.

Migrant workers, legal or not, do not enjoy the sameminimum wage guarantees as Thai workers, most earning about3,000 baht ($100) a month, half the payment required by law forThais.

Only those who are registered, a quarter of the two millionmigrants working across Thailand, are eligible for state healthservice through insurance purchase, leaving the rest to fendfor themselves or seek help from international aid groups.

They also face restrictions such as a ban on using mobilephones or driving vehicles on the pretext of security, whichallow corrupt law enforcement officials to exploit them, aidworkers said.

"If Thailand's labour laws were followed across the board,fewer migrants would resort to illegal crossings or besusceptible to trafficking, and could travel and work withbasic rights under law," Human Rights Watch said.

"It's time for the Thai and Burmese governments toimplement transparent measures that protect the lives and basicrights of migrant workers," the rights group said.

(Editing by Darren Schuettler and Jerry Norton)