Government urged to widen employment opportunities for skilled Thai workers in ASEAN

BANGKOK, March 15 (TNA) - Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI) has encouraged the Thai government to widen employment opportunities for skilled Thai workers in the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), where a single community will be formed by 2015 with free flows of trade, investment and labour. Based on an employment-related survey conducted recently in Bangkok and 18 other Thai provinces, TDRI’s Research Director Yongyuth Chalamwong said that excessive supply of workers with bachelor degree in Thailand has resulted in higher unemployment rates. Yongyuth suggested that Thailand take the upcoming regional integration as a good opportunity to promote the employment of skilled human resources with bachelor degree or higher, rather than focusing on sending only unskilled labourers abroad traditionally. In the wake of Thailand's flooding crisis late last year, the survey found that many local industries had still relied mostly on unskilled foreign labourers and had faced labour shortages. To solve such the problems in a sustainable manner, the TDRI chief researcher pointed out that Thailand’s production sector needs to be restructured. For a prompt action, however, the TDRI researcher chief recommended that local factories adopt labour-saving high technologies, which would help them reduce costs but increase productivity. (TNA)