DEATHS OF BURMESE BRINGS SHAME ON US

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EDITORIALS
Deaths of Burmese brings shame on us
It's time to open up the labour market to stop official corruption and abuse of workers
Published on April 11, 2008
Let's play a game. We should all stand in a circle, as in a game of musical chairs, raise our arms, and point to the next person. But there will be enough chairs for everyone. And the music will never end. It is called the Thai blame game. The deaths of 54 Burmese migrant workers, most of them women, who suffocated in a container on a truck has once again placed Thailand in an unwanted spotlight.
The victims, along with 47 survivors, were crammed tightly into a 2.2 metre by 6 metre container. They were about two hours into their trip late on Wednesday from Ranong province near Burma to Phuket when some of them succumbed. Of the dead, 37 were women and 17 were men.
The senior investigating police officer blamed the truck driver for failing to turn on the air conditioning in the back of the truck, which normally was used to transport seafood. Perhaps the driver was concerned about the current energy conservation thing; perhaps he didn't even think that Burmese people can feel pain and discomfort.
Tragic incidents involving Burmese workers in Thailand are nothing new. Some reach international attention, but none seems to matter to the people and government of Thailand as long as we have an ample supply of cheap labour to build our high-rises, peel our shrimps or mop up our floors.
This tragedy is about much more than a broken air-conditioner. For too long, we have turned a blind eye to human trafficking. One of the reasons is because everybody gets their cut - from the border officials and the traffickers to the employers and the consumers.
Burmese workers, like Cambodians and Laotians, take up jobs that are shunned by most Thais, mainly because Thai employers hate to pay more than the legal minimum wage. The London-based human rights group Amnesty International found in a 2005 report that workers from Burma who take jobs that Thais consider too dirty, dangerous or demeaning, "are routinely paid well below the Thai minimum wage, work long hours in unhealthy conditions and are at risk of arbitrary arrest and deportation."
We hire these workers because they are not demanding. We don't want to hear their sad stories - how much they had to pay the police, border officials and traffickers so they could work in Thailand.
We just don't want to hear whatever grievances they have back home - how oppressive the Burmese military government is; the lack of social mobility in Laos and Cambodia, and so on.
Our lack of appreciation towards foreign workers has moral, social and ethnical consequences. This is much more than an issue of fairness. How we treat others says something about us as a country, as a society. And after the tragic death of the 54 Burmese, can we really look at ourselves in the mirror and not feel any guilt?
Let's hope this tragedy is a wake up call for the Thai government. We need to think outside the box. Because we are unable to properly address the problem of trafficking, perhaps we should permit the labour market to let the law of supply and demand determine how many foreign workers are permitted to enter the country and their salaries. It may be chaotic at first, but eventually the labour market will find its equilibrium.
At the least, this would put an end to the corrupt practices of the authorities. No one would have to hide in containers or under bundles of produce. Corrupt officials would no longer benefit from smuggling and the government could tax foreign workers the same way it taxes all of us.
The Nation