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Men Working in Thai Fishing Industry Subject to Severe Exploitation

Sakda Seehawongs, an iron factory worker, was on his way home to Si Sa Ket. Waiting at Rangsit railway station, two northeastern men befriended him. They went to have some drinks. When Mr. Sakda woke up, he was on board a fishing trawler.

The 27-year-old was later forced to work from dawn to dusk on board a boat that caught fish in Indonesia for nearly a year. The work was inhumane. He was allowed short sleep, forced to eat malnutritious food. Whenever he took a break, he was beaten up by the skipper or his associates. In May this year, Mr. Sakda was rescued by marine police after he was spotted jumping off the trawler, which moored at Pak Phanang pier in Nakhon Si Thammarat province to have some machines fixed.

Mr. Sakda's fate is like that of many workers who are either kidnapped or forced to work like slaves on board fishing boats plying the international waters. Deceiving young men to work in extremely harsh conditions in the fishing industry is a new pattern of human trafficking in Thailand.  "We are very concerned about it," Ekkaluck Lumchomkhae, chief of the missing people information centre, Mirror Foundation, said during a recent seminar on ''Slave Labour on Illegal Fishing Trawlers.''

Set up four years ago, the centre has received about 800 complaints from relatives of missing people. It is investigating 19 cases of people believed to be deceived or abducted into working on fishing trawlers. The number is but a tiny tip of the iceberg, said Mr Ekkaluck. He is certain many more men have been duped into taking the fishing jobs but they cannot yet escape the floating hell.

Having worked with the centre throughout the four years of its existence, Mr Ekkaluck found that Thai men mostly from the North and the Northeast are the main victims of this human trafficking ring. The ring members paid 3,000-5,000 baht to their labour agents who would persuade or abduct young men to work on fishing trawlers.

Traditionally a source of income for men from the Northeast, the fishing work has been largely shunned and left to migrant workers because of its heavy workload and cruel conditions. Mr Ekkaluck added that these agents rely on different means ranging from placing job ads to a personal approach and drugging the victims to get them on board the boats.

Sompong Sakaew, director of the Labour Rights Promotion Network (LPN), called on state authorities to work harder to help suppress this human trafficking ring. More preventive measures and campaigns should be launched to raise awareness of job seekers about the trafficking danger.

Mr. Sompong, whose organisation monitors the rights of Thai and migrant workers mostly working in the fishing industry, said many of the victims are maltreated by fishing business operators. He cited as an example a case of six fishing trawlers with about 100 crew members, most of them migrant workers, which sailed from Samut Sakhon province to fish in the Indonesian waters a few years ago.

The trawlers returned to Thailand in July last year but about 40 crew members did not. They died on the job. Some who did became seriously ill – emaciated, emotionally disturbed and unable to see, hear or walk properly. A Samut Sakhon Hospital medical report diagnosed the men with serious vitamin deficiencies as they ate only fish for months. None was paid. Ironically, they are not considered by law to be victims of human trafficking, Mr. Sompong said.

Adapted from: "Many men made to suffer in floating hell." The Bangkok Post. 24 July 2007.