In Southeast Asia, Unemployed Abandon Cities for Their Villages

February 27, 2009
By THOMAS FULLER
New York Times

DON SAO HONG, Thailand — After months of clinging to the hope that Southeast Asia might avoid the worst effects of the global economic crisis, layoffs across the region have gathered pace, governments are announcing sharp falls in economic growth and lawmakers are passing a raft of stimulus packages.

Here in the northeastern corner of Thailand, the unemployed, still paunchy from lives in the big city, have begun to trickle back to their villages.

While the crisis in the West centers on insolvent banks, home foreclosures and swelling unemployment, in Southeast Asia economists predict that one hallmark of the downturn will be the exodus of workers back to the family farm.

“It won’t take them long to lose their bellies,” said Samer Songserm, the 56-year-old wizened headman of this small village who has counted 10 unemployed workers returning from Bangkok over the past two months.

From the bright green rice-terraced hills in Indonesia to this expansive plateau in northeastern Thailand, an exceedingly fertile countryside is a cushion for hard times for Southeast Asia’s 570 million people.

The number of workers returning to their villages, while difficult to measure because many do not report their working status to the government, appears to be accelerating. Here in Ubon Ratchathani Province, Thailand’s fourth largest, officials say 2,187 workers have returned from other provinces and registered as unemployed since November, half of those in February alone.

The crisis is still in its early stages in Southeast Asia. But as conditions worsen, as many economists and governments are forecasting, factory and construction workers, waiters in the fancy restaurants of Bangkok and the chambermaids in Jakarta’s hotels will have little choice but to return to their villages if they lose their jobs. Most countries in the region, including Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Cambodia and Laos, do not have a national system of unemployment benefits, according to Gyorgy Sziraczki, an economist at the International Labor Organization’s regional office in Bangkok. Other countries, like Thailand, offer modest assistance to the jobless: a maximum of $200 a month for no longer than six months, provided they paid into a social security fund while they were still working.

Laid-off migrant workers in other parts of the world, notably in China, are also reportedly returning home. But one difference for workers in Southeast Asia is that they live in a very accommodating climate.

“Somebody said to me the other day, ‘It’s better to be poor in a warm country than a cold country,’ ” said Jean-Pierre Verbiest, the country director of the Asian Development Bank in Thailand. For this and other reasons, returning to one’s traditional village in the countryside is a sort of “social safety net,” Mr. Verbiest said, although he is not sure what the scale of the exodus will be because links to the countryside are weaker than they once were.

Economists are predicting that millions of workers will be unemployed as the economies of Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia contract this year, and the Philippines and Indonesia grow at sharply reduced levels. Thailand, which is highly dependent on exports, is among the worst hit in the region, with its economy shrinking 6 percent in the last quarter of 2008 alone.

When regional leaders gather this weekend for the summit meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations at Hua Hin, a beach resort south of Bangkok, the economic downturn is expected to dominate discussions.

The leaders are putting into effect a “charter” intended to help guide the region toward an economic bloc similar to the European Union. They are expected to reaffirm their commitment to abolishing trade barriers by signing free trade agreements with Australia and New Zealand. And finance ministers have committed in principle to back up each other’s currencies in case they come under strain or attack.

Yet there appears little the leaders can do to mitigate the dramatic drop in demand for computer parts, shirts, rubber and palm oil — all exports that helped Southeast Asian development in recent decades and sent millions of people from villages into swelling cities.

In the case of Thailand, government stimulus measures could pump around $5 billion to $8 billion into the economy, said Supavud Saicheua, the managing director of Phatra Securities in Bangkok. But the loss in exports, he said, will be “two to three times what the government can spend.”

Mr. Supavud predicts that the crisis could keep 1 million Thais out of work in a nation of 65 million.

Workers who have already returned home say they are happy to be back with their extended families but frustrated that they cannot find new jobs.

“When you compare comfort, it’s better here,” said Paisarn Sansiri, 42. “But we have no money.”

Mr. Paisarn left his job at a Japanese-owned factory because the management stopped giving out overtime — 15-hour workdays that had provided him with a big enough paycheck, about $370 a month, to pay for life in Bangkok for him and his wife.

For the first time in a decade, the extended family is all living under one roof: Mr. Paisarn, his daughter, grandchildren and his wife and her parents. He spends his days burning logs to make charcoal in the backyard; he looks after the water buffalo and fishes in a pond hidden behind a rubber plantation. The family has stocks of rice from the December harvest and a couple of motorcycles to get around.

“I miss my job,” he said. “I’m bored with having no money.”

Although this is the hot and dry season in northeastern Thailand, there are still plenty of year-round crops — gourds, beans, coconuts and bananas among them — that thrive with little rainwater. Farmers raise chickens and cows, and dig fish ponds behind their homes that fill up with rain or groundwater. They feed the fish by turning on a light near the pond, attracting bugs to the light’s reflection on the surface of the water. Thailand’s king, Bhumibol Adulyadej, has long encouraged such self-sufficiency.

A Thai saying about the bounty of the countryside goes: “In the water, there are fish; in the field, there is rice.”

Yet life back in the countryside is cutting short the dreams of many here to pull themselves out of poverty. And losing work in Bangkok also sometimes brings shame. Ekalak, 24, returned to his extended family from a factory job in a Bangkok suburb. He told a reporter he did not want to give his full name because he would be embarrassed if people in his factory recognized him.

He sleeps in the same room as his grandmother and is now helping build a house for his aunt, a lottery ticket seller, next door.

Like Mr. Paisarn, he left when his factory eliminated overtime, reducing his salary to about $115 a month. “I would have had only debt if I stayed,” he said.