The Needs and Wants of Foreign Laborers in Agricultural Sector in Thailand
Abstract
Before the economic crisis in 1997, Thailand enjoyed overwhelmingly a very rapid growth rates around 8-9 percent. This rapid economic growth associated with a strong demand for labour, especially in the industrial and service sectors. But it has been very unfortunate for Thailand that the benefit of growth has been concentrated in the major provinces located in the central part of the country. It was indicated by the per capita income of people in Bangkok and its vicinities was 8 times higher than the people in the Northeastern region, the poorest region in Thailand, in 2002. Benefits of development have not eventually trickled down to the grass-root people in rural sector.
Declining in population and labour force participation rates have started to impose restriction on the expansion of labour supply to serve certain sectors. Educational background of Thai work force has been low. An imbalance of educational system in favor of the urban cities has pulled rural teens to seek better education in the major cities and very small numbers have returned once they graduate. In addition, the government has put efforts trying to improve educational level of the workforce to 12 years. It started to contribute to a shortage of labour in some provinces of the country, especially in a low return and risky agricultural sector near border-town areas.
As non-agricultural sectors have been developed during the past three decades. It caused a major disparity between agricultural wage (income) and non-agricultural wage (income). As a result, agricultural enterprises can not compete for farm workers. The shortages of agricultural workers, resulted from “taste change”, especially to perform manual jobs or 3-D jobs, have felt among farming all over the country. It was estimated that the country should need at least 3- 400,000 foreign workers to work on agricultural sector in addition to 2.3 million Thais who currently employed in agriculture. It was estimated by CGE model that for every 100,000 hired foreign workers would contribute to 0.16 per cent increase in GDP and would depress wage of Thai workers by 0.21 percent. In 2002, the government granted work permits to those undocumented workers from the three neighboring countries who were waiting to be repatriated, 103,000 in fishery and related activities, 103,000 in farming (e.g., rubber, palm, fruit, flower and horticulture), and 30,000 in animal raising in 2001.
Hiring a large number of undocumented workers from neighboring countries also contributed negative social impacts to Thai society. This includes increasing number of illegal migrants and levels of communicable diseases, dependent, crimes, health care facilities and other social infrastructures.