In Thai shrimp industry, child labor and rights abuses persist

SAMUT SAKHON, Thailand — It is 7:30 p.m., and an excited chatter fills the room as Nampeung, 11, and her friends get their work checked before clearing their desks and heading home.

But this is no scene from the end of a school day.

Nampeung is from Myanmar and an ethnic Mon girl who has been working in a seafood factory in central Thailand for nearly three years.

The desks are the metal tables where she spends six days a week shelling shrimp, and her work is measured by the kilogram.

Of the 200 people working in a barnlike factory during an unannounced visit by Reuters, nearly half appeared to be in their early teens or younger - clear evidence of child labor in an industry worth $2 billion a year in exports.

Half of Thailand's exported shrimp goes to the United States, where it ends up on the shelves of retail giants like Wal-Mart Stores and Costco, according to Poj Aramwattananont, president of the Thai Frozen Foods Association. Japan and Europe each account for 20 percent.

Even though she can only dream of going to school, Nampeung is one of the lucky ones. She makes as much as 300 baht, or $9, a day - more than the province's minimum wage - and sees nothing wrong with children her age working.

"The old people are so slow," she said with a broad smile, sitting demurely on the floor of the concrete hut next to the factory, which she shares with her mother, father and three siblings.

Other factories in the coastal province of Samut Sakhon, 50 kilometers, or 30 miles, west of Bangkok, where 40 percent of all shrimp are processed, do not have such a contented work force.

A police raid on a factory called Ranya Paew in September revealed conditions that were little short of medieval.

Around 800 men, women and children from Myanmar were imprisoned behind walls 5 meters, or 16 feet, high and topped with razor wire in a compound patrolled by armed guards.

The rescued workers told human rights monitors that they had to work 18 hours or more a day and were paid 400 baht a month, out of which they had to buy food - mainly rancid pork - from the factory's owner.

Those who asked for a break had a metal rod shoved up their nostrils. Three women who asked to leave were paraded in front of the other workers, stripped naked and had their heads shaved.

The Labor Rights Promotion Network, a nongovernmental organization that estimates there are 200,000 Burmese migrant workers in Samut Sakhon - of whom only 70,000 are legally registered - says that the Ranya Paew case is the worst it has seen.

But this, the group says, is just the tip of a human trafficking iceberg of factories fed by people-smuggling rings and labor brokers that have the complicity, if not active involvement, of government officials and the provincial police.

"For many migrants, work in Samut Sakhon is the chance for a better life, but for too many it leads to abuse," said Sompong Srakaew, president of the nongovernment organization.

"Unscrupulous employers and brokers conspire to ensure migrant workers remain vulnerable to exploitation. This is only possible with the complicity of elements within the law enforcement authorities."

Wal-Mart and Costco said that none of their shrimp had ever come from Ranya Paew and that strict ethical guidelines for suppliers, as well as audits of processing units in Thailand, ensured that they complied with food standards and labor regulations.

One shipment from Ranya Paew a few years ago, however, did end up in the United States, according to a Western diplomat who has followed the case closely.

Poj, the president of the Thai Frozen Foods Association, denied that children or trafficked people worked in the industry, saying factories were monitored carefully.

"There are no more illegal workers in the Thai food industry, because the government registers all the workers properly," he said. "We never use child labor."

But even Thailand's biggest agro-industrial company, Charoen Pokphand Foods, which produces its own shrimp from pond to package, is not untouched by allegations of trafficked labor.

The company sells a range of shrimp products to the United States and Europe, including the "Thai Torpedo" and "Bangkok Firecracker."

According to the Labor Rights Promotion Network, when the police and immigration officials raided a Charoen Pokphand factory in Samut Sakhon on April 5 and fired shots into the air, more than 100 Burmese migrants in the compound tried to escape by swimming a canal.

Six workers who could not swim are thought to have drowned, the Labor Rights Promotion Network said, and the police rounded up and deported 90 others to Myanmar for being illegal migrants.

Narong Kruakrai, the general manager of the plant, described the raid as a "regular visit" by the immigration police and said the factory never hired illegal workers.

The labor rights group said the workers appeared to have been employed by a third-party broker.

With smaller shrimp companies, overseas buyers have an even harder time conducting their own background checks, as much of the processing is outsourced to small operators.

As a result, foreign companies rely more on the Thai Labor Ministry, which is responsible for ensuring that factories do not use illegal or child workers. But the ministry is short on staff, the Western diplomat said.

"The Thai Ministry of Labor lacks the proper resources to conduct rigorous inspections of these factories," he said.

Despite the discovery of abuses at Ranya Paew, the police in Samut Sakhon have allowed the plant to remain open. In the meantime, about 200 Burmese men were deported as illegal immigrants, and more than 60 women and children are in a Bangkok center for victims of trafficking.