Under sanctions and desperate for hard currency, the military regime is forcing Myanmar workers abroad to remit earnings through formal channels, with some warning it will only push more migrants to become undocumented.
By FRONTIER
Ko Min Aung* works for less than US$10 a day at a Bangkok furniture company and yet each month he manages to save around half of his meagre earnings to send back home to his parents in Magway Region.
The 25-year-old is one of some 332,000 Myanmar workers legally employed in Thailand under the terms of a Memorandum of Understanding signed between the two countries, according to Thailand’s Ministry of Labour. More than 1.5 million others work under other legal arrangements, while up to another million are estimated to be undocumented.
The MoU, signed in 2016 by the National League for Democracy government and put on hold after the 2021 coup…
