Thai immigration officers deporting Cambodian workers from Thailand (Photo: Sovannara, Loh Santepheap)Banteay Meanchey – Illegal Cambodian migrant workers including men, women, young and old, were deported back to Cambodia by the Poipet border gate on a daily basis, and there is not a single day that goes by without a single deportation. Each day, 300 to 500 of them are deported back. According to these illegal workers who were deported back, they all came from various provinces of Cambodia, and they entered Thailand by paying middlemen who led them in.
The workers said that the middlemen charged them between 2,000 to 3,000 Baths ($62 to $92) to take them to Thailand to look for work, and sometimes, after working in Thailand for a long period of time, when they want to return back to Cambodia, they have to pay middlemen to take them back across the border. These workers indicated that among the workers deported back, some of them were not arrested by the Thai authority, they surrender themselves to be arrested so they can return back home safely. Without using this tactics, their belongings and monies will all be confiscated from them.
Cambodian officials asked Cambodians who want to cross the border illegally to look for work to earn a living, to be careful not to fall into the traps of the middlemen when they arrive in Thailand. Furthermore, some workers who arrived back in Cambodia do not even have money to travel back home, even if they were promised a job by the middlemen who take them to Thailand.
Regarding these illegal migrant workers, The Cambodia Daily reported on 18 February that, Bun Hor, the cabinet chief of the Banteay Meanchey provincial office, reported last week that 105,709 Cambodians, including women and children, were deported back across the Poipet border gate, last year. Bun Hor was quoted as saying through the phone that: “These people went to work in Thailand illegally.” He added that among this group of deportees, 43,647 were women, and 8,676 were children. He believed that more than 15,000 Cambodians are still working illegally in Thailand in farming, as security guards, fishermen, cooks, market peddlers, construction workers and factory workers.
Bun Hor said that farm owners in Cambodia have a tough time providing jobs to these workers, therefore the workers went to work in farms in Thailand instead. Cambodian farms can provide only 1-2 months of work only per year, whereas in Thailand, there is work for them all yearlong.
Chatorun Chayakam, the first secretary of the Thai embassy in Cambodia, was quoted by The Cambodia Daily as saying that: “Even without any encouragement (from the Thai government), several Cambodians and Burmese cross to Thailand to look for work also. He said: “The Thai authority is doing all it can to prevent these people from entering Thailand illegally, and it arrested all these illegal workers and deported them back to Cambodia. We will not put them in jail, they will be deported back to Cambodia. They are only deported back, this is not a too serious issue, and this (daily deportation) work now becomes a routine.”
