Thai workers to be upgraded under Thailand 4.0

BANGKOK, August 26 (TNA) - The Board of Trade of Thailand has raised six proposals to support the Ministry of Labour's move to further develop Thai workers and solve labour problems to serve the government's Thailand 4.0 initiative. Board of Trade of Thailand Vice Chairman Poj Aramwattananont told a press conference held with the Centre for Economic and Business Forecasting (CEBF), under Bangkok-based University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce (UTCC), in Bangkok on Friday that Thailand has faced the problem of labour shortage over the past 15 years, prompting local business operators to employ a large number of migrant workers and causing social, security and public health problems in the country consequently. To support the government's Thailand 4.0 initiative, Poj proposed that the Thai Ministry of Labour solve domestic labour problems in six main aspects. They include promoting potential development among Thai workers to enhance their efficiency and to reduce labour-intensive businesses, laying out a labour alternative policy under which skills of potential groups of workers will be further developed, solving the problem of Thai labour shortages by integrating data on labour supply and demand in all sectors in the national economy, revising the national immigration policy to provide more conveniences, amending laws and regulations, like those on working hours, to ease obstacles and to prevent human trafficking and regulating migrant workers to protect them from all forms of abuse. Meanwhile, CEBF Director Thanawat Phonvichai cited data from the Ministry of Labour's Office of Foreign Workers Administration as indicating that the number of migrant workers in Thailand has kept rising over the past five years, totaling as high as about 1.56 million in last month alone. Thanawat urged the Thai government to seriously solve problems related to migrant workers, namely a thorough probe of their background and the provision of health checkups for them to promote their good quality of life, while also further developing workers' skills in all sectors to support the government's Thailand 4.0 policy. (TNA)