On December 21, 2021, Labour Minister Mr. Suchart Chomklin assigned Permanent Secretary of Labour Mr. Boonchob Suttamanaswong to attend the meeting to listen to the proposal of the Fisheries Association of Thailand. The Ministry of Labour’s Inspector-General Mr. Orathep Intarasakul, the Department of Employment’s Director-General Pairoj Chotikassthian, representatives from the Fisheries Association of Thailand, and related persons attended the event at Tien Achakul Room, 10th Floor, Department of Employment, Ministry of Labour.
The meeting discussed the exercise of power under Section 83 of the Fisheries Act B.E. 2558 with conditions. Foreign workers must have passports or a document used instead of a passport that has not expired and has a stamp of entry into the Kingdom and has been granted permission to stay in the Kingdom temporarily and permission to stay in the Kingdom temporarily and work for no more than two years at a time. The authorization schedule ends together in each cycle and can be renewed before implementing the yellow Seabook. The rules follow the Cabinet’s resolution on June 29, 2021. For the detailed conditions, the Department of Fisheries and the Department of Employment were assigned to discuss the details before submitting them to the Foreign Worker Management Policy Subcommittee and the Foreign Worker Working Management Committee.
Permanent Secretary Mr. Boonchob said that the COVID-19 situation has made the management of foreign workers to be legal workers, according to the set goals, to be difficult. It is, therefore, the origin of various projects to maintain labour. He emphasized the Department of Employment and the Department of Labour Protection and Welfare to convert illegal foreign workers to have legal status. If any agency has illegal workers, they can be prosecuted according to the law and the implementation of bringing foreign workers to work with employers in the country, according to the MoU.
